Close Encounters 6
by chezchuckles
Summary: You Only Live Twice. The continuing adventures of Spy Castle and Beckett.
1. Chapter 1

**Close Encounters 6: You Only Live Twice**

* * *

_once more for cartographical_  
_who never stops_  
_who carries the hope no matter the hopelessness:_

_this is your story_

* * *

The hospital was cold and dark when they stepped off the elevator, a phalanx surrounding Beckett as she led the way down the hall. Castle was at her right hand and the boys were flanking them, but she was feeling the most vulnerable she'd ever been right now.

She wrapped her fingers around the blue garnet ring on her left hand, breathed against the strange throb of her scar that seemed to drill through her back and out her chest. Castle's thumb came briefly to her elbow and she straightened up again, relaxed her fist. The ring was that smoky blue that had always comforted her, made her think of him and the way his eyes turned dark when he saw her.

Outside the hospital room was a cop that she and her team knew well; Esposito had recruited the woman to stand guard for the rest of the night, and while Hastings was strangely reluctant, she had also brought her friend, a journalist, who was interested in helping them break this case.

Beckett wasn't sure how she felt about that. She'd met Paul Whittaker on a few of their homicides, but she wasn't certain that this kind of thing could be handled delicately with the press all over it.

Still, Esposito and Ryan thought it was a good idea, an idea they'd had that might force Bracken to pay for his crimes. City-wide exposure and the outcry of the public were their weapons to wield. Even if Castle was skittish of the journalist.

Beckett nodded to Officer Hastings and the woman gave that brisk nod back, standing at ease but with her eyes straight ahead. "Paul here?" Kate asked.

She shook her head. "He was with me earlier," she admitted. "But, he won't - he stayed outside. It's all off the record until you say, Detective Beckett."

Detective. It was strange to hear it.

Castle took hold of the knob and pushed into the room; Beckett thanked Hastings and followed him inside.

Smith looked like death warmed over. It wouldn't be long now.

* * *

The old man's lips were cracked and split; his left eye was closed with swollen, black bruises, and the right side of his body looked like it had been put through a cheese grater. It wasn't professional in the sense that Castle recognized the work, but it was most definitely done by someone with a certain skill set.

He was grateful that Ryan had gotten out of the encounter with such minimal damage, now that he saw Smith.

Beckett looked grim as she faced the broken man but Castle leaned in close, his body half-blocking Kate's view, and he pressed his fingers over the oxygen line where it rested on the bed. The cannula jostled and Beckett took a deep breath in, pushing closer, and he made certain she couldn't see.

"Mr. Smith," he said gravely, nudging the man's bandaged side.

The right eye flickered and fluttered open; the white was bloodshot and the pupil looked blown. Not good. Could have brain damage from intracranial pressure.

"Mr. Smith. Take to wake up."

"You," the voice groaned up from the damaged throat.

"Me," Beckett said forcefully, pushing past Castle and leaning over the bed. Castle released the oxygen line and let it flow through suddenly; the influx of oxygen made Smith rouse a little more.

"What do you. . .think you can do?" Smith rasped.

"More than you could," Castle answered nonchalantly. "Where's the file, Smith?"

"Wouldn't give you the pleasure," Smith groaned. Castle pressed his fingers into the crook of Smith's elbow where it was bruised and the man jerked, sucking in a breath.

"Smith?" Beckett asked, reaching for him with concern. "Smith, you have to tell me where you put the file. Just tell me. I can take him down; I can make Bracken pay for this."

"Have no idea what - what you're up against," Smith croaked. Castle shifted farther away and let Beckett work on her appeal, but he kept his fingers pressed into the man's elbow. She didn't seem to notice, so focused on the man.

"Please. You were my Captain's friend. He knew you would protect me," Beckett murmured. "He sent you that file because you could be trusted. Trust me now. Please."

Castle didn't expect it to work, but for some reason, Smith's face twisted in something that looked like regret. The older man opened his mouth and Castle immediately removed his fingers from that ugly bruise.

"Beckett," Smith sighed. "This is. . .bigger than you. Look - at me. What happened - to me. You have. . .no chance. Against him. No chance."

"I have Castle," she said back. She didn't even look at him when she said it, but he saw her hand move against the bed, searching for his. Castle gripped her fingers in confirmation.

Smith's good eye went to him in a dark and dangerous way. It made Castle stand up straighter, something in him alerted. He'd tortured this man, once upon a time - or gotten far enough down that road that Smith wouldn't forget.

"Smith, please. If you tell me where it is, then I have a _chance._"

Smith's eye roved to Castle once more and then his mouth opened. "Eighty. . .six. Eighty-six."

Beckett leaned in but Castle frowned, something stirring in his gut. Suspicion.

"Eighty-six Mmm..."

The alarm went off just to Castle's right and he jerked back, checked to make sure he hadn't accidentally pulled out one of the lines. But the alarm still sounded and the man's eye had rolled back in his head. Beckett was checking his breathing, but Castle grabbed her shoulder and moved her away as the nurse came in.

A code was being called, they were hustled out, and the response team was flooding the room. Castle grabbed her elbow and moved her towards the boys.

Ryan looked - despite not being able to take in a deep breath - strangely excited. "I know what - I know where it is. I know what he was trying to say."

Castle stared at Ryan and then his face cracked wide into a relieved grin. He clapped Ryan on the back and put a hand at the man's neck, gripping him tightly. "Ry - my man - are you serious?"

Ryan winced but nodded, shrugging out from under Castle's hand. Right, yes, Beckett had accused him of this before - being a bully. He let go and waited.

"We've had to do a lot of digging into Smith - Castle's orders, right? And I know that number. 86 Markwell Street. Michael Smith owned that building until recently, when it was bought by a development group. However, he has a controlling interest in the group."

"86 Markwell. You sure?" Beckett asked, frowning past their group to look in at Smith.

Castle watched the concern on her face and felt struck again by how much. . .more she was. If Michael Smith died, it would affect her; she didn't want it to happen. But Castle couldn't care less, one way or another. He wondered if - if things had been different for him - would he look like Beckett? Would he care like she did, be concerned for people? Or would he be callous in some other way - was he just wired to not let people affect him?

Except Beckett affected him. Beckett got to him. And if she didn't want Smith to die, then he. . . .no. No. Still didn't like the man; he remembered that look on Smith's face as he'd refused Kate's request. But for her sake, he hoped her conscience was at ease whatever happened.

86 Markwell Street.

"Let's go get that file," Beckett said suddenly, her face determined.

He had a bad feeling about this file.

* * *

The construction site was covered mostly in thick plastic sheeting to keep out the elements; looters had been through at one point and stripped out the copper wiring, leaving gaping holes in the sheetrock. They'd lost their funding midway through the project, if Beckett remembered correctly, and now it languished.

She, Castle and the boys stepped carefully into the remains of the ground floor, mindful of debris, and she pulled the weapon Castle had given her from his own stash. Her service weapon was still in the 12th's safe, but she liked the feel of this one.

Ahead of her, his own Glock drawn, Castle paused and held up his fist for them to stop. She halted at his back and felt her team do the same. Castle jerked his head towards the open doorway and pointed to his eyes and then back to the space beyond.

She nodded and Castle crept forward while her team was in ready. He eased to the doorway and then widened his eyes and held up one finger.

A man. One man.

Beckett turned to her team and they followed at her command; she brought Espo and Ryan into the shadow at Castle's side and they waited for his signal.

Castle framed the door next to her, while her boys were across from them. The hallway led over onto a former ground floor apartment. Beckett sneaked a look, gave it a quick study, and closed her eyes as she pulled back, memorizing the layout.

The man had been kneeling on the floor; he looked familiar - so damn familiar. She wasn't sure from where, but she thought she'd seen him. Either as a suspect in Castle's long briefing when they'd arrived stateside this morning, or attached to Bracken as some kind of security detail.

But either way - there was no doubt he was Bracken's man.

"They bug the hospital room?" Castle murmured in her ear.

She shook her head and shrugged. No way of knowing how this guy had gotten here ahead of them. "Most likely," she mouthed.

He set a grim line and then he held up a hand to the boys - both Esposito and Ryan looked like they were chomping at the bit, but Beckett figured they could let this guy do all the work, nail him when he came out.

Suddenly Castle stiffened and she heard the sound - telltale clicking, like a connection being made - and Castle was hurtling himself towards her.

The explosion punched them both back; Castle landed on top of her with a grunt and his eyes closed, his forehead smashing into her chin. She gripped his shirt even as debris rained down on them. Through the smoke and haze, she saw confetti.

Bright, brilliant lines of numbers and letters and photographs in tiny, parade-like pieces, drifting down over them like snow.

The file.

* * *

Castle had already called in his CIA team - unfortunately led by the grumpy Agent Deleware - so he told Beckett to send Ryan home. Poor guy could barely breathe through his taped ribs after that explosion. But the rest of them picked through bomb debris for the remnants of the file.

It'd only been twenty minutes when Castle glanced up from his sifting screen and tweezers, feeling entirely too CSI for his action-hero taste, and noticed that Beckett wasn't working - she was wandering.

"Beck."

She gave him a funny look for that and he realized he'd inadvertently given her a nickname. Calling out _love_ in the midst of a CIA op probably would have been worse. He raised his eyebrows and gestured her over and she came to squat down next to him.

"Beckett, you finding the work too tedious for your liking?"

"It's not that," she said slowly, like she hadn't even registered his sarcasm. Whoa. Something was going on here because Beckett snarked with the best of them.

"Kate?"

She was biting her lip and glancing around, and now he saw that she was studying each face of the men on his team. His hackles raised instinctively - these were his guys, even if Deleware was a brown-nosing, pain in the ass.

"I just," she started, then finally turned back to him with a constrained smile. More of a grimace. "Rick. The guy who set off the bomb."

"Yeah?"

"I know who he was."

"Who?"

"One of your guys."

"What?" he hissed.

She shook her head and put out a hand to stay him; he realized he'd half risen from his crouch and instead dropped back down.

"What are you saying, Beckett?"

"Remember the guy from the hotel that night you got Foley here in New York?"

"The night you swiped my key card."

She bit her bottom lip and he saw a surge of shame flash over her; he hadn't meant to bring that up ever again. He really hadn't; he needed to keep his mouth shut.

"That night. The guy right outside my door. Mr Spy Bodyguard. That was him. In here. Now in - pieces."

Castle stared at her, but she had the grim set to her eyes that he knew too well.

"Mr Spy Bodyguard," he repeated slowly. "You mean Stone. Stone Spadden."

"Spadden?" she murmured. "But yeah. Stone - he looked like a stone."

"How could you possibly know it was him? This guy had his back to us the whole time and you got one brief look."

"Dude," Esposito interrupted with a low voice. "Beckett is the best at that. The sketch artist comes in - Beckett nails it right off. She's never wrong."

Castle gave her another look, and she hurried on to continue her theory.

"You said it yourself, Rick," she said softly. "For someone to get here ahead of us, the hospital room had to be bugged. Someone who put it together just like Ryan did. To have that information, to know what we know that quickly?"

He groaned and squeezed his eyeballs with his finger and thumb, pinched the bridge of his nose. "Shit. It's someone in the CIA."

"Maybe it was just Stone," Beckett said calmly. "But if Bracken got to him, flipped him or has always had him, then we gotta look closely at your team here."

"And who knows if they're destroying evidence right now," Castle said, grinding his teeth as he glanced around.

Esposito shook his head. "It'd be hard to do with so many of us. We're each working a grid - it's pretty detailed and we'd notice. Too big a risk. But I do think once we get as many pieces as we can, we take this to a guy I know from my time in the 54th."

"Oh?" Castle asked, not liking that idea at all. A _guy_ he knew?

"Yeah, man. Document restoration dude we used once for some shredded books. He'll be able to get on it, start piecing back together what we've got."

Castle shook his head. "No. Not-uh. This is classified information. The more people who know about this, the more-"

"Castle," Beckett interrupted, holding her hand out to silence him. "My call. You said. This is my call. I don't think we can trust the CIA _or_ the NYPD. Too many moles. We go to this guy Esposito knows-"

"He owes me a favor."

"-and then we see where we are. If you want, you can baby-sit the whole process. Park yourself at his office and don't let the confetti out of your sight."

Castle crossed his arms and tried one last time. "What about that FBI agent? Shaw? She had a line on this."

Beckett rubbed her fingers at her forehead and bit her lip. "I don't think we can trust anyone in the alphabet soup."

Castle sighed, but he could see her concerns were valid. "Fine. We'll send it to your guy."

* * *

Kate watched him - once more - pack his bag. It seemed most of their life together was a series of packed bags.

It made her ache. Some cracked part of her chest was opening even wider as he threw a set of clothes into a backpack and checked the ammo clip for his weapon. So she slid between him and the bag on the bed and wrapped her arms around his waist, pressed her cheek to his chest.

His hands came up to her neck and shoulder almost automatically; his mouth descended to her cheek.

"You'll get the dog?" he murmured.

She nodded against him. "And visit with Carrie a little bit."

"Thanks, love. I don't want to forget her in the middle of all this."

"Piecing together this thing might take longer than you expect," she murmured into the hollow of his throat, kissing him again. They'd taken to being circumspect even in her own apartment, wary of the agents on his team, wary of the ways they could be tracked and monitored.

"It might, but for now - I don't plan to be away from you that long."

At least a night though. And a good part of the day. And the way he was packing his bag, another night after that.

"Espo's taking me there, doing the introductions. You sure we can trust this to some felon from the 54th?"

She snorted into his skin and squeezed him tighter. "Only resource we got, Rick."

He sighed and traced his lips across her forehead. "I miss you already."

Kate pinched his hip. "Don't be sappy. That's so not you."

"It could be me. I could moan and mope around the house for you, call you every hour to ask what you're doing-"

"Don't you dare," she laughed, shaking her head against him.

"I mean, think about it. You met my - you met Martha. You see what she's like. Had she raised me, who _knows_ how melodramatic and ridiculous I'd be."

Kate pressed her lips together, tried to imagine Castle as a man less than fully in control of himself.

And realized that, yes, actually. She could. It wasn't all the ways he'd be less himself, it was all the ways he'd be more. More relaxed, happier, quicker to laugh. He was already a different man than the one she'd met, already gentler, more compassionate. He had that same steel core of strength and uncompromising loyalty, but now he tempered it with a willingness to understand.

She curled her fingers around his bicep and promised herself she wouldn't push, not anymore. If he wanted to meet up with his mother now that they were back in New York for a while, she'd make that happen. But she wasn't going to nag him about it.

Suddenly his mouth was on hers, soft and slow, warm lips making her open for him. She gripped his arm tighter and lifted on her toes to meet the tension of his kiss, slid her other hand to his neck to stroke through his hair.

He broke to range down her throat, and she clutched his nape and curled around him, her lips brushing at his jaw, over his ear. She hummed and closed her eyes, breathed in the winter-dark scent of him. Like metal and wood, snow and sweat.

"Love you," she murmured into his skin. "I love you so much, Rick."

He gripped her harder and lifted her off her feet, walked them the last few steps to the bed.

* * *

Castle fiddled with the edge of the man's desk as their felonious professional spread the materials out over a massive workspace. The light difussed across the room but made each piece of confetti all the clearer, already an improvement from their team's pitiful attempts.

He was beginning to like this guy - Esposito's document restoration professional. Joseph Mickoltzick, Mick for short, was a mousy guy with black-framed glasses and orthopedic shoes. His plaid shirt was rolled up at the sleeves and missing a button somewhere in the middle.

He cared more about paper than he did about life, which was an ideal characterisitic in a guy working on restoring this file. Castle studied him for weaknesses and figured only his ability to be physically threatened would work against them. Mick was safe enough, so long as Castle kept up his precautions.

He missed Kate.

Stupid, sentimental, just as she'd said - sappy. But there it was. He wanted to see that smile that she gave him when she was pleasantly surprised. He wanted her mind at work with his, churning over theories and ideas about Bracken, what to do next, how to proceed.

Last night he'd slept here at Mick's office on a sleeping bag and he'd missed her. He'd called her and they'd talked quietly long into the dark hours of the too-early morning, but he couldn't bear to hang up and not hear her voice, throaty and sleep-hungry and rich on the line. She'd made him tell her a dirty story, which he'd had to make up on the spot, and she'd laughed and told him he was terrible at it.

And then she'd told _him_ a story and it had been entirely too much.

He missed her. And staring at a skinny, excitable little man as he tweezed through fragments of paper just wasn't distraction enough.

So when his phone rang, he smiled in pleased relief and answered without looking.

"Castle," he said, expecting that laughing tease to her voice.

But it was his father. "Richard."

"Ah. Agent Black-"

"New information. After that stunt on Markwell, the lines have been lighting up. We've got intel coming in all over the place."

"And?"

"He's got it out for you. Don't know how the word got around, but it was hitting the regular places simulataneously, Richard. This was no trickle down effect. This was a _flood_. They all know."

"About?" Castle grated out, so very over the way Black liked to dangle his information over his son's head, give it to him piece by piece like-

Oh, shit. That's what Beckett had accused him of before, wasn't it? Giving it to her in fragments, building suspense, enjoying the power of knowledge.

Castle scraped a hand down his face. He was going to have to change that, be aware of what he was doing. "Look, Black. Tell me what's going on."

"There's a hit out."

A hit - seriously? Bracken actually put out a hit? "On me? How much?"

"Both of you. Four million dollars to the man that can prove you and Beckett are dead."

His heart contracted; he couldn't breathe. "Both - both of us. Me. And Beckett."

"That's what I said."

Castle hung up.

He presssed his lips together, then startled up from the stool. "Sorry, Mick. Gotta leave you to it."

Mick glanced over at him as if just now realizing Castle was there.

Fine, that was fine. Forget the file. He had to get to Kate.

* * *

Beckett's phone rang sharply in the cold air and Sasha pulled on the leash as if she were in a hurry to get home, as if she knew.

Kate chuckled into her phone as she answered the call from _unknown_, somehow certain that Castle was home now. He'd sounded so morose last night, alone, and she hadn't expected him to last much longer at Mick's place.

"Hey there, handsome. Feel like getting lucky tonight?"

"You answer every blocked number like that?" he asked. There was a tightness to his voice that she didn't understand.

"Yes. I do," she said with a smirk, shaking off the sensation and wrapping her hand around the leash. "Oof, Sash. Slow down, you big wolf."

"So I just got home and you're not here. Where's my welcome party, Kate Beckett?"

She laughed and glanced down at the dog. "Sorry, baby. We're miles from you."

He whined on the phone, a matching whine for Sasha's eagerness, and she laughed again.

"Where are you?" he asked. There it was again. Must be his controlling, domineering, bully of a self coming out again.

She rolled her eyes. "In Central Park. I didn't expect you to get out of that _meeting_ so quickly." Meeting. Uh-huh.

"We're working on it, Kate. I mean - I know it's not ideal, and it takes time, but this is what we've got. More than what we had."

She bit her lip and nodded, even though he couldn't see it. "I know. I'm - I'm okay with this. I know this is just how it goes." She didn't say all the things she wanted to say - how the confetti of that file still haunted her at night, how having everything so very close made her restless and aching with the need to finally shut it down, have it be _over._

"I'd give anything to just be done with this," she sighed. "I just - I need it done. I want to move on with my life." _I want you._

"I know, Kate. I know."

She swallowed hard and nodded again, kept her eyes on the dog to help give her control. "Your girl's excited you're home."

"Oh, you are?"

She laughed at that, felt the smile spread across her face. "Not me, you idiot. Your dog."

"She's your dog too."

"No," she said softly, felt that peculiar tenderness well up in her when she thought about how much he adored this wolf. How much he adored her as well. "No, she's yours. And so am I, Castle."

"I knew it," he sighed out softly. "You're on your way home, right?"

"Mm, not quite. Why - you anxious for me?"

"I am," he said darkly, and even though she knew the intention was supposed to be sensual, somehow it came across. . .uneasy. Like he needed her right in front him to be sure.

"Hey," she said quickly. "Love you. You know I love you."

"I know. I know, Kate. Just - wish you'd been here when I got home. Love you back."

She hummed and smiled into the phone, reached down to let Sasha off the leash. The dog nosed at her for a moment, then slowly wagged that long tail and wandered off.

Castle cleared his throat. "Hey, what do you want for dinner?"

"I don't know. Anything. I'm hungry already."

"How long will it take you to get back?"

"Much as I'd love to hurry home, we just got here and she's not. . .gone, you know? So it might be another hour."

"Oh, okay. Might order something then. Oh huh, what is this?"

"What is what?"

"In your fridge. Leftovers?"

"Oh, I made that chicken thing."

"You up for that? I might heat it up in your oven now. Be ready when you get here. Tempt you home faster with succulent chicken."

"Sure, but it's not as good as when you make it. Just a warning," she laughed, wrapping the loose leash around her fist. "Sasha, sweetheart, just _go_ already. I'm not taking you home until you do. Daddy is waiting."

"Daddy?" he chuckled, and she blushed, shaking her head.

"Um. Forget I said that."

"No way," he said triumphantly. "You called me daddy. You want little Castle babies."

She sighed and blew the hair out of her face, but she couldn't exactly deny it.

"Not right now, Castle. Maybe later."

She felt his breathlessness over the phone, heard it in the stutter of his next words.

"Yeah, yeah. Okay. I - yes. Later. Um. What's up with your oven?"

"What do you mean?"

"When's the last time you used it, cause it's not coming on."

"It's fine, Castle," she said, rolling her eyes.

"Hold on a second. Let me see if I can-"

She heard him put the phone down, and she trailed her eyes to the dog. The wolf sedately investigated a tree, nosing around it, and then disappeared through some bushes. Kate didn't follow - the dog liked _privacy_, the silly thing - and she listened to the sounds of Castle on the other end, fiddling with her oven.

He better not break-

"Oh, God."

Her heart flipped over. "Castle?"

And then a furious roar screamed through the speaker and the line went dead.


	2. Chapter 2

**Close Encounters 6**

* * *

_I'm sorry, but the party you are trying to reach is not available._

God. What did that even mean?

Beckett tried again, her hand shaking so hard that the empty leash rattled; she had to pull it together, had to fucking _man up_. "Sasha," she called once more. "Sasha, come. Sasha."

Please. She had to - something had happened to him. She needed the damn dog to come _now. _She walked around the tree and inspected the bushes, redialed. Fuck, same stupid recording.

_I'm sorry, but the-_

She ended the call and yelled for the damn dog again. "Sasha! Right now!"

The wolf bounded out of the bushes and came to sit at her side, evidently responding to the touch of hysteria in Kate's voice.

"Good dog," she soothed, leaning over and clipping on the leash, but her voice cracked.

Sasha came immediately to her feet with her ears attentive, her teeth bared.

"Yes, I think so," she murmured, a churning in her guts like a hand was scraping out her insides. "Let's run. Let's - we have to get home."

Castle. Whatever that was - whatever -

It had sounded like fire.

* * *

Agent Black stared in at the burnt out husk of Beckett's kitchen, nothing showing on his face but for a small tic that started in his jaw. "Listen. You do exactly as I say."

Castle turned his head away from his father and took a shallow breath of ash-choked air. "How did you get the fire department to-"

"We don't have time for this, Richard. Listen to me. We have to act now."

"He fucking blew up Beckett's apartment. It would've been Kate who - it would've been Kate." Castle's fingers felt numb; he didn't know why, just. . .everything was strangely removed.

"Exactly," Black said coldly. "And thank God you have some ounce of training still left in your body, or else Beckett would be ID'ing your damn body."

"Fuck," he moaned, scraped a hand down his face with his heart pounding. "I was on the phone with her. I was - she'll know something's - give me your phone."

"No."

"What?" he hissed, rounding on Black.

"You _listen _ to me. This is the perfect opportunity. You died, Richard. You're dead. We'll get a body in here, let the NYFD back in, the PD with be all over this. But you are dead."

"What? You're telling me to _run_?"

"He has a contract out on your lives. He is not above placing a bomb in your damn girlfriend's apartment, Richard. Best chance for her is that you die right here, right now."

"She has _no_ chance if I can't be here to protect her. What the _hell_-"

"If you're dead, then you have an open playing field, Richard. You fake your death and you can finally do your damn _job_ and take Bracken down. Bracken dies, she lives."

Castle stared into the soot-smeared remains of her apartment. How close it'd been. A localized charge in the oven that set it off when he'd turned it on to bake. But he'd set the temperature first and that had given him the moment he needed, the pause to glance inside the window and see the sudden bulk.

He'd dived into her claw foot bathtub and the place had nearly come down on top of him. And now Black wanted to. . .

"Fake my death."

"Best chance Beckett has."

"Wait a minute, I need to think about this."

"We have no time. No time. Listen, this is the only way. I'm still your superior officer, and this is what we're doing." Black was already pulling out his phone and Castle had a sudden sense of what happened next - so clear, so perfect an image. Kate coming back to the fire trucks and the NYPD on scene and stepping into this wreck of an apartment to identify some blackened corpse just like - just like Copenhagen - her seeing the bodies in those flames all over again.

"No," Castle yelled, jerking the phone from his father's hands and ending the call. He couldn't breathe. "No. I won't. Beckett-"

"Beckett has to think you're dead. If Bracken is convinced he got you, he'll think he's free and clear. And you have the opportunity to finally get him and take him down."

"Beckett. She'll - she won't be safe. I have to-"

"We'll put her on 24 hour guard. She'll know she's a target but she won't know you're alive; I'll run her like a field operative whose cover has been blown while you go after Bracken."

A fist squeezed around his heart. "I can't - can't do that to her. You don't understand. I can't-"

"Either you die in this explosion, Richard, or I pull _all_ security from you both. Do you hear me? How long can you hold off a whole army?"

"Fuck you," he growled, his hand closing around his father's phone as if he could squeeze the life out of him. "You bastard. You can't pull the protective duty."

"She gets nothing if you don't do this."

"You fucking-"

"And you know you can't control her," Black said smoothly, a glint of triumph to his eyes that Castle loathed. "You can't _make_ her stay under security, make her stay safe. Bracken will get her, one way or another. He rigged her apartment, Richard. He can get to her anywhere."

He sucked in a ragged breath and turned his back on the man. He'd never thought, never knew Black could be so - could be -

"I _love_ her."

"Then do what's right for her. Give me my phone; I'll call it in to the team and you'll disappear."

Castle clenched his fists, felt the phone dig into his palm. He couldn't do it to her.

"It's either save her life or spare her feelings. Should be no contest."

And it was clear what he had to do.

Castle turned and gave Black his phone, watched the older man call it in.

"You promise there're guards on her 24/7," Castle said hoarsely, the ash sticking in his throat.

Black nodded. "24/7. I control her, then I control you. It's in my best interest to keep her alive while you - you, Agent Castle - stay dead. And we will eliminate Senator Bracken."

And then Black was turning away, issuing sharp commands into his phone, and Castle dropped to his knees in the fire-damaged living room, felt the great wrenching sobs dragged up in his chest-

but no tears would come.

He was already dead.

* * *

"Kate! Thank God, oh thank God."

Beckett found herself caught up in Lanie's too-tight grip, but her eyes were stuck on the scene in front of her apartment building. Fire trucks, police, the boys rushing over, the bleak night and the whine of the dog still on her leash and straining.

"Oh, God," she moaned. "Castle-"

She dropped the leash and shoved hard on Lanie, struggled to get past, get through, get _inside_. She had to get to him, she had to find him-

"No, no, Kate. Katie, no. Please," Lanie begged, grabbing her by the shoulders. "Espo, Ryan, I need your help!"

"No," Kate gasped, pushing them aside. "No, let me-"

"It's already over," Esposito said harshly in her ear, his arms banding around her. "It's over, Beckett."

"Castle, God-"

"Castle is supposed to be at Mick's," Ryan added, but she elbowed him to get away and he grunted in pain.

"Fuck. Your ribs, God. Sorry, Ryan - but he's - he called me. He called me; he was on the phone with me when it - when it - he was home."

"We found a body, Kate."

She stumbled to a stop halfway down the sidewalk and turned slowly back to Lanie, the blood draining out of her so fast she swayed. The dog pushed a nose into her slack hand.

"Lanie, no."

"I thought it was you," Lanie said, eyes brimming.

"No."

"There was a chain. It looked like the chain with your mom's ring-"

"You saw - saw-"

Oh God. No. No, no, no-

"In the ME's van now, Kate."

"No," she moaned, sinking to the concrete as if in slow motion. None of them touched her; she couldn't bear to - she couldn't-

"I have the chain," Lanie said suddenly. Kate lifted her head, on her hands and knees on the sidewalk, the dog whining at her neck, the wail of blue lights flashing across her face, and she saw her friend pull an evidence bag out of her pocket.

It unfolded and swung between them, the chain inside. The ring.

Castle's wedding band.

Oh God.

* * *

"He was in an explosion. So it's. . ."

She nodded tersely and chafed at the edge of the ME's van. The dog was howling now, back at the tape line with Ryan, who could barely move thanks to Beckett's elbow in the ribs.

She bit her bottom lip and turned her head to Lanie. "Let me in."

"Kate, honey, I really don't think you want to see this."

She tightened her fists but she couldn't make her mouth move for a second. And then it broke free. "I need to look. To know. I need to know."

"You don't," Lanie said firmly, taking her by the shoulders. "Let me explain this to you, Kate Beckett. Would you ever let a victim's family see a body like that?"

Her resolve trembled; her knees ran weak. She'd seen corpses - she knew bodies. But _his_, God. "It can't be him. It's not him, Lanie. It's not-"

"It is," Lanie said quietly. "His chain was found near-"

Near. Near? "It's - there's not - what is the - the condition. . ." Her throat closed up and her eyes slammed shut, but all she saw behind her lids was the flaming wick of those men in Copenhagen, how they had form and substance for long, terrible minutes, voice to scream but not breath, how the burning of their flesh stuck in Beckett's lungs and squeezed.

"He was in an explosion. And it burned pretty hot. There's - only a few remains, Kate. Just - there's fragments."

There were. . .fragments. His - his hands? God, his hands were so beautiful and wide and firm, and the way his mouth-

"I can't - can't not see him," she moaned, pressing the heels of her palm into her eyes and bowing her head. "Please, Lanie. I'm falling apart here. Please."

"This isn't something you want to carry with you."

"I already am. Already - I already am."

The men in Copenhagen, the wick of their bodies in flames.

Lanie sighed and opened the doors of the van. Kate balked for one moment then put a foot up on the runner and hauled herself inside.

It wasn't even a body bag.

It wasn't even a body.

* * *

"Beckett, I can take you-"

"No."

"Kate, honey, just let Esposito take you to your father's. Or come home with me-"

"You're supposed to be doing the - the - autopsy." She clutched the leash and wrapped it tighter and tighter around her hand, stared down into the dog's liquid eyes.

"It's just cataloging. Perlmutter can-"

"No," she barked fiercely, jerked her head up to stare at the woman. "It has to be you. Only you. Bracken did this. I know he did this. I have to - he has to - Castle-"

"Okay," Lanie whispered, interrupting to throw her arms around Kate. "Okay."

Beckett shuddered and pulled back, the taste of smoke and ash in her mouth. Burned flesh and melting adipose tissue. Bones turned black.

Only the curve of his clavicle, the wing of his scapula.

"Let me drive you," Esposito said again. "Or let Ryan take the damn dog; she won't shut up."

Even now, the wolf whined low in her throat and rubbed the side of her muzzle against Beckett's knee, her body so close that her paws stepped on Kate's feet.

"No."

"Let me drive-"

"No, I need to - be not - I need to. . ." She felt the tears pushing up suddenly, the traitorous, riotous tears, and she bit on the inside of her lip until the pain cleared out her throat again. "I'll take a cab eventually. But I need to walk. I have to - there's - I'm not at a good place."

"No, shit," Esposito growled and the force of his words, the shock of them, jerked her head up with a strangled breath.

"Uneloquent and insensitive an ass as that man is," Lanie sneered back. "He is right. You should not be alone. We won't let you."

Kate gripped the leash tighter and let her eyes burn dark and void on the medical examiner's. "If you guys keep - touching me - I'm going to break. I'm going to fucking break apart, Lanie, and I will _not_ be able to get it back together."

All three were stunned into silence. Beckett waited a moment and then wrapped the leash tighter around her fist, the pressure of that nylon holding her together.

"I will get a cab when I can't walk any farther. I have to - I need to go. Call me if - when you - call me."

"Let us at least call your cab," Ryan said quietly, and he'd been the only one this whole time who hadn't tried to tell her what to do. The only one who'd looked at her with such heartrending sympathy that she hadn't been able to look back.

She wound the leash tighter. "Okay. Call me a cab."

The dog whined and pressed her nose into Kate's hand, the vibrations of her anxiety carrying up into Kate's heart and cracking it.

She had to get out of here.

* * *

The thought of going to her father at the cabin made the bile rise in her throat and burn in her nasal passages.

She swayed in the back of the cab and gulped down the insistent sickness, counted her breath to be certain she was, still, breathing. He'd sat on the end of the dock and smiled at her and the sun had come in golden around his hair and his skin was alight-

Alight. In golden flames. Flaming - God, she couldn't-

Beckett choked on a sob and shivered, but the dog pressed in tighter, ever tighter, and for some reason, some impulse, Beckett wrapped her arm around the wolf's neck and held on.

"Can you - different address. I need to-" She stopped and took a deep breath and then she gave the cab driver the address to Castle's old apartment.

Sasha whined and licked at her cheeks, and Beckett sat like a stone as the cab turned around.

* * *

She roamed his apartment and the dog followed after her, both of them restless.

She skimmed her fingers over the dust on top of his dresser, opened the mostly empty drawers, unseeing. She wandered around the bed and looked out the window, sightlessly, moved back to haunt the hallway before winding up in the kitchen.

He said, the oven. The oven was what?

She fumbled for her phone and dialled Ryan, breathing through the knot in her chest.

"Beckett?" he answered. "Hey. What. . ."

"Did the fire inspector check the oven?" she said without preamble, glad that her voice didn't crack.

Yet.

"Beckett."

"Did they check? Because we were on the phone and he - he said it was - not working. But I-"

"Beckett, they got it covered."

She nodded and ended the call, realized how she sounded, how - how desperate. But this wasn't - it wasn't-

She called Lanie.

"Kate, where are you?"

"Where - wait. Did you - are you doing the - are you looking - I mean. Is there DNA? Because I just-"

"Kate, honey. He was a spy. I'm not likely to find a match."

She heard the whine and glanced to the dog, but fuck, it wasn't the dog, it was herself. It was just her own grief breaking out. "Right. No dental records either. But wait. He lives with me - his DNA is all over-"

She broke down, the vision of him in her apartment, brushing his teeth at her sink with that little boy smile - now blasted away by the blackened interior of her kitchen, the ruined and water-logged furniture of her living room, the two bones. The two bones of him and a handful of ash and the smell of death and his ring on a chain.

"Kate. Kate, honey. Kate. Talk to me. You gotta talk to me. Where are you? Let me come-"

"I'm fine," she gritted out, sank to her haunches in the hallway. "I'm okay."

"You are not okay. You just lost your husband-"

Oh, God. "He - how did you know?"

"Honey, you're wearing his ring. And the one on the chain?"

She reached up and gripped the wedding band hanging around her neck, felt the harsh catch of each link abrading her skin. "Yes. We - in Rome. Just. A surprise."

"A surprise," Lanie said softly.

"I can't - don't make me talk," she rasped, closing her eyes and bringing the ring to her lips. It tasted like oil and ash and she gagged, pitching forward onto her hands and knees.

"Kate! Kate, talk to me. Or don't talk to me. Let me know where you are, Kate. Please?"

She found the phone and tilted her head back against the wall, felt the dog nudging into the sharp angle of her hip. She glanced over at Sasha and saw the wolf's tall, attentive ears and her strange, too-human eyes.

Kate put her hand on the dog's head and took in a breath. "I'm at - I'm not at my dad's."

"I know. I called him. He's worried about you."

"I'll call him. Lanie, I have to go. I can't - I can't do this."

She ended the call and saw Sasha, the whine rumbling up in the dog's throat, and Kate turned into the big body and buried her face in Sasha's fur, trying to keep it together.

* * *

"What do you mean _you lost her_?" Castle roared.

Deleware was typing furiously at the keyboard in front of him in the command center, and Castle reached around to snag him by the shoulders, haul his bony ass in front of him.

"Define _lost_."

"Momentarily, I swear. Agent Castle, it's only momentarily. The cab didn't go to her father's cabin. The _second_ it disappeared from the route, we immediately started emergency procedures."

"Which is what?" he snarled, but Deleware was wriggling out of his grip.

"Sir, if you'll just let me get back to the computer, I'll have it for you. The cab's route is logged via GPS. We'll know exactly where he let her out."

The door opened into the command center and Castle spun around to confront his father, waltzing inside like nothing was wrong. Castle had taken a five minute break from the mission brief only to discover that the elite, 24/7 protective team had fucking _lost_ his _wife._

Basically his wife.

Even if he had left his ring caught up in some poor bastard's clavicle a few hours ago, completing the ultimate abandonment, he was still her husband. Even if she never forgave him for this, Kate Beckett was his wife.

"He lost Beckett," Castle ground out, glaring at his father. "You said twenty-four-seven. What the fuck is this?"

"What did you do?" Black sighed, his eyes on Deleware.

"I've got it now," Del squeaked. "Just one minor glitch. And we're back. I got her. She's at. . .oh, shit. She's at your place, Agent Castle."

At his-

"The CIA safe house?" Black murmured.

"Yes, sir."

Black crossed his arms over his chest, looking entirely too pleased. Castle was not. At all. Pleased.

"We can't get in there," Castle said heatedly. "Her father's cabin - no problem. This is the damn CIA safe house. We can't get in there to watch her, protect her, when it-"

"Actually, we're already in."

Already in.

Castle rocked back on his heels and stared at Black, but his father was moving to a terminal and calling up a workstation screen, logging in. And then in the next moment, the bank of monitors was displaying five different camera angles positioned strategically through Castle's own damn apartment.

"Holy shit," he groaned, sinking into the office chair at the back.

And then he saw her. Kate.

Curled up in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall, her arms around the dog, and her face turned away from the camera, buried in the wolf's fur as her hair spilled around her.

Her shoulders were shaking.

Oh, baby. Oh, Kate.

* * *

Later it occurred to him that he should've been pissed that his father had been surveilling him for who knew how long. He should have asked how long and what the man had seen of his and Beckett's personal life, but at the time, and even now, he couldn't care less.

He'd had the video feeds sent directly to his phone and all he had to do was call up the app and watch. He felt wretched for it, but he couldn't not.

Even in the middle of his mission briefing, as he sat with Black and one other elimination specialist, hashing out the details of their final procedure, trying to decide which venue offered the best exit strategies and which method required the least amount of clean up afterwards, even then he watched Kate.

Everyone had just agreed on poisoning - the senator had a mild allergy to peanuts that could be enhanced with blowfish toxins in a seafood buffet - when Castle happened to look down at his phone and see her.

Kate was passing from the hallway into the kitchen, her fingers trailing the walls like she was blind and lost, feeling her way. At the beginning of their relationship, they'd spent a whole week holed up in his apartment, eating only waffles (he'd had a ton of waffle mix for some reason and not much else) and making love and laughing. She'd convinced him of the merits of maple syrup and he'd had to throw out his sheets - couldn't get the stickiness out.

She knew his apartment; she knew the place well. And he was strangely comforted that she was there, that she had his meager things surrounding her, while also horrified by the idea that this apartment was all she had left of him. Most of his belongings had been at her place - damaged in the bomb or just gone.

He saw her curl her fingers at her chest, and he had flashes of memory - seeing her drawing out her mother's ring and showing it to him, telling him the story - but now it was his. It was his wedding band, the one he'd never even gotten a chance to wear on his finger in public, in front of her friends, in a real life. She held it tightly in her fist and then she opened his cabinet and pulled out the vodka.

Oh, Kate. Please, love. Please, don't.

She poured three fingers' worth into a plastic cup and downed it, put the bottle away, and wandered back towards the bedroom. The dog was at her heels, and when Kate sank into the mattress and laid down, Sasha bounded up onto the bed beside her, nudging into her face.

Kate curled around the dog and closed her eyes.

"Richard."

He jerked his head up and saw Black watching him.

"Are you ready to join us, Agent?"

The elimination specialist was giving Castle a hard look and he knew he had to get his head in the game. The sooner they voided Bracken, the sooner he could get back to Kate.

Not long, baby. Not long now. _I promise._

* * *

She laid there staring into the darkness, but it was too alive. She had to get up and turn the bathroom light on and then crawl back into bed with the dog and breathe.

She had to breathe.

Sasha whined in her throat until Kate settled, and then the dog put her muzzle on her paws and watched Beckett try.

And fail.

Sleep wasn't going to happen, but she wanted so very badly to fall asleep. She had this feeling in her heart like sleep was the only cure, the only way to reset everything and go back to last night when he'd called her from Mick's workroom and chuckled over the phone and made her crazy with just the sound of his voice and the story he told.

And her damn body ached for him, traitorous and treacherous thing, with the smell of him in the sheets he hadn't been back to in months, a whole year of living at her apartment and yet his bed smelled intimately of him.

Kate rolled her face into the pillow and inhaled, closed her eyes only to open them again, flames licking at the darkness of her memory.

She gave up and got back out of bed, headed into the kitchen again. One more, just to make her tired, to make her eyes droop and her body relax. Vodka made her sleepy, and if she could just take it in one swallow, then it might hit her hard enough to drag her under.

Beckett pulled the bottle back out from the cabinet under the counter, poured a little more than usual into the plastic cup still sitting by the sink. Her eye caught the gleaming, stainless steel oven and she poured just a little more.

She twisted the cap on the bottle and replaced it, took the cup from the counter and stared down into its clear, pristine depths.

Kate knocked it back and choked as the burn rose up the back of her throat and into her sinuses, coughed when it exploded in a burst of numbness across her body. She swayed on her feet, but it couldn't really have affected her yet, could it?

She'd had nothing to eat all day and she'd just drank vodka like it was water, so maybe. Maybe. . .

Beckett dragged back to bed and laid on top of the comforter, realized the dog had followed her in and out and was now nesting beside her. Kate turned her back on the wolf and curled her arms around his pillow, put her face into the fabric and inhaled him, deep and rich.

And passed out.


	3. Chapter 3

**Close Encounters 6**

* * *

Castle was kissing her neck, wet and warm, his fingers playing at her hip and sliding under her shirt. She arched and felt the hard press of his body over hers, the tightening of her muscles into that coiled readiness for him. He swiped his thumb at her ribs and she clutched his shoulders, surged upwards to get closer only to be pulled away by the powerful release of pleasure flooding through her, drowning her so utterly she couldn't breathe.

Kate gasped awake, eyes wide, and turned to Cas-

She was alone.

The bed was empty, not even the dog.

Castle was dead.

And even though her body was flushed and pliant with dreams, reality was brutal in the early morning pre-dawn.

She stared out into the grey nothing and felt the disjointed removal of her spirit, drifting, looking down on the haggard wretch in the bed, separate and apart.

How was that woman going to physically make it? And tomorrow, and the next day, and all the tomorrows and the hours and the nights still to come?

Without him.

* * *

"I can't take it," he rasped. "I have to - there has to be a way to tell her."

Black shook his head. "You tell her, and they will know. And it will be for nothing. All this pain you've caused her - it will be worthless, Richard. We get Bracken, and it will actually mean something."

"Can't I leave her a note?"

"Don't be a fool."

But that put into mind another idea, the impression of her fingers at his waist and her smile at his lips when she'd read his letter. All his letters.

Her detective's notebook. He still had it on him, actually, because it'd been in the pocket of his cargo pants when he'd dived into the tub. He always kept it on him, wrote down little things he wanted to tell her when he got the chance.

But if he put it strategically back inside that wreck of her apartment, she'd find it. Wouldn't she?

If she ever left his bedroom. The funeral - she'd have to - she would. She'd be there. He had seen her fight against a damn bullet in the back to attend Eastman's funeral, and she would definitely go to his.

Fuck, he was making Kate Beckett attend his own damn funeral.

This wasn't right. This wasn't right at all.

But a letter. He could fill the notebook with letters and tell her everything, all of it, he would let her know she wasn't alone no matter how gone she believed him to be. He couldn't give away the secret - she had to sell it. Bracken would be watching and Beckett was the key to his false sense of security.

And if Beckett was - if she was like this - coping poorly and those vacant eyes that twisted his guts - if she was like this, then Bracken might even call off his contract on her life. He might see she was no threat and rescind the hit. Maybe.

Castle went back to his temporary workspace in the bowels of the Office, and he pulled out her detective's notebook. He stared at those small, leather-bound pages and his heart was in his throat.

He took out his phone again and opened up the video app, watched the feeds.

The camera showed Beckett still in his bed, only now she was awake. And staring off into nothing.

He picked up the pen and started to write.

* * *

It was eleven when she dragged out of bed and stood swaying in the middle of his bedroom. She should. . .there should be something.

There ought to be something. Castle was - he wouldn't be happy with her like this.

She pressed her hands into her eyes and growled back the tight knot of grief that clung to every breath.

There should be something.

She had to do something. This was nothing and nothing was going to bury her alive.

Beckett turned in the room and suddenly the dog was trotting in from the hallway. Sasha had probably given up on her and gone to sleep in front of the door, where the cooler air from the hallway came inside. The dog's tongue was out and she was giving Kate that _hurry up_ look.

Oh. This was - she had to take care of the dog. Shit. The dog. What had she - Sasha hadn't been outside since - the park. Since the park, oh God. The park. The bomb.

Kate stared down at the dog and blinked back the sting of grief, shuffled forward blindly into the hall, looking for her shoes. The leash. Where was the leash?

She found a pair of Castle's slip on deck shoes, the rubbery ones, and she pushed her feet down into them, snagged the leash off the floor and clipped it on Sasha's collar. The dog licked her fingers, her face, whining and nudging Beckett's hand with her head.

"Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," she whispered, standing once more to fumble at the door. The keys - oh shit - she nearly forgot the keys.

Beckett snagged her keys and shoved them into the sweatshirt pocket, psuhed back through the door. She didn't remember when she'd pulled on the sweatshirt, but it was his, and his smell lingered everywhere.

Fuck, she was a mess; she was going to kill the poor dog. And food. Holy shit. The dog needed food and where was she going to even - she had to go back and get things. Her wallet. What a massive idiot she was, running away yesterday. She didn't even have her wallet or her badge; the extra gun was still in the safe most likely, and then there was whatever she could scavenge from the ruin of her place.

She tripped down the hallway with the dog and stumbled down the stairs, her head pounding and throbbing and the shoes too big for her feet. She got to the first floor and pushed open the door and was met by a fierce March wind that knocked her back. Beckett shivered and the dog yawned into the wind and tugged her forward.

She followed Sasha's lead, her feet tripping, and the wolf pup brought her to the park that met the building's property. She had sickening deja vu as she unclipped the leash and had to sit down in the brown grass, put her head between her knees.

She had to get her shit together. She was dangerously on the edge. She needed to feed the dog and get the pieces of her life that could he salvaged-

But _he_ was her life and oh God, oh God, oh God, he was gone. He was gone.

He was never going to come walking back through that door and wake her with a kiss, never going to bully her into doing what he wanted, never going to touch her again.

He was dead.

It was beginning to be real.

* * *

All he had to do was wear the old-fashioned, ivy cap that shielded his eyes, the black frame glasses, the dark wash jeans, and an argyle sweater, and he looked worlds different from the sober, suit-wearing CIA agent. Castle pushed the notebook into the pocket of his leather jacket, also new, and stepped quickly under the tape at her door.

He'd seen on the video that Beckett had left the apartment with the dog, and though her wardrobe choice was poor, though she looked half-dazed and seemed to stumble out the door, the _going outside_ part had heartened him.

A layer of shame had settled over his guilt as Castle realized that he was finding some sick reassurance in playing voyeur to Beckett's grief. Maybe it was because of his childhood, but seeing her - falling apart - she really did love him, want him; she was really his.

But he shoved the feelings ruthlessly down and scanned the wreck of her apartment, taking it all in with clearer, more sober eyes.

It looked bad. He was seeing it now as his home that had been violated, and the dark scars of scorch marks were angry and malevolent in their claim. The kitchen didn't even look the same, and it was obvious that the oven was the origin of the explosive device.

It was horrific, really. To think that Beckett had-

But no. She hadn't. Deleware had reported her movements to him while he was stuck in the elimination meeting, and he'd read that Lanie and the boys had kept her down on the sidewalk in front of her building. She hadn't even come upstairs.

She'd see it for the first time when she came to collect what little she could salvage from the wreck.

He felt sick to his stomach at the thought.

Everything gone.

Even - even himself. Castle couldn't even be here to stand at her side, to be the reassuring warmth at her back. He was taking that from her, and even worse, he was perpetuating the lie that he himself had perished along with their home.

His hands clenched in his jacket pockets and he felt the sharp edge of her detective's notebook at his fingers.

Castle growled through the clutch of grief in his chest and turned quickly for the bedroom. She had a box of things; she'd look for it first. Her father's watch and her mother's ring on its chain. And even though she'd stopped wearing them while they'd worked overseas, he knew they were still very much on her mind.

Her room reeked of smoke, but she might be able to get her clothes dry cleaned. Maybe. Her closet seemed untouched when he opened it, though the smell permeated every piece of fabric. He couldn't help reaching inside and plucking the t-shirt from the laundry hamper, the one she must have been sleeping in the night he'd called from Mick's place.

He pressed it to his nose but it smelled like smoke and ash and burning things.

Not even that then.

Castle tossed it back into the hamper and closed the door, then he turned and faced her dresser. The wooden box was askew, as if the explosion had jarred it. He carefully took off the lid and saw her family keepsakes inside.

He wished it was more, so much more; he wished he was a normal guy who had never opened up this case again, never insisted - with that smug superiority - that of course he could solve her mother's murder.

He'd given her nothing but terror and heartache and now - now this blackened, ruined place that had once been their home together.

The notebook's sharp corner dug into the meaty part of his thumb and he opened his hand.

He had one thing to give her now, only one thing.

Words.

It was a cold and lifeless gift, but it was all that - in this sham death - he could offer her.

Castle placed the notebook inside, and then he left her apartment.

* * *

Black pulled him aside with a snarl and a curl of his lip. "What do you think you're doing?"

Castle stood his ground, refused to respond. It had worked since he was a boy, and it worked now.

"Richard, you put the entire elimination plan at risk by going out there. And to _her apartment_? What were you thinking?"

He kept his mouth shut, turned away from his father, started walking down the long hallway to the command center. But Black caught him with a crushing grip on his shoulder and jerked him back.

In that instant, he remembered how much Beckett hated his father for the way Black treated him, for the way the Special Agent consistently derided Castle and offered no support whatsoever.

And he saw it so clearly; for the first time ever in his life, he knew exactly what Beckett despised.

Castle raised a hand to the grip on his shoulder, calmly pried the man's fingers off. "Do not touch me. Ever. Again."

"I am your superior officer and your father, Richard. You will-"

"Then fire me."

And Castle turned back around and walked purposefully down the hall.

He couldn't resist adding one more thing:

"And you've never been a father to me. Don't start claiming it now."

* * *

Ryan met her on the sidewalk in front of her building; he glanced down at the dog and raised an eyebrow.

"You stay down here with her," Beckett said quickly.

"Beckett, I'm not supposed to let you in there unsupervised-"

At the look on her face, Ryan shut up quickly, and Kate handed over the leash. Sasha whined low in her throat, but Kate leaned over and stroked through her soft fur, smoothed it back from the dog's eyes.

"Stay," she said quietly.

She stood once more and shifted the empty duffle bag she'd pulled from a closet in the apartment, tried to push down the wrecked version of herself that was still emotional from just the _smell_ of him in the bedsheets.

Beckett headed resolutely for the front door of the building and climbed the stairs without faltering, mentally preparing herself for what was inside.

She couldn't - she had to stop thinking about him so damn much.

The dog. She needed to get - if the whole kitchen was - then okay, the toys Castle had bought-

Fuck, everything, everything led back to him.

_Stop it._

Beckett dragged her feet up the last steps and marched down the hallway, ignoring the tickling in her throat that said she was smelling his shaving cream and the stiffly-new scent of his clothes. That wasn't him; it was all in her head. The hallway of her apartment building wasn't going to actually smell like him.

Get it together, Beckett.

She removed the tape at the door - it was loose anyway - and pressed it against the frame.

And then she walked inside her apartment.

* * *

Kate sank to her haunches in the short hall before her bedroom, hidden from the living room windows, and she cried.

The notebook was cradled against her chest, in the cove of her body, and she couldn't bear to look. The weight of it was going to crush her.

She cried and cried, great gasping breaths that did nothing to ease the constriction in her chest or the black hole at her very core.

She cried.

He must have - she could see it so clearly in her head. How he'd have come in the door and dumped his stuff wherever, taking things out of his pockets and placing them on her dresser, a sudden urge to put her detective's notebook with her father's watch, her mother's ring. One more sentiment added to the pile.

She curled tighter around it and she cried.

She tried to stop, she tried. She swiped her hand against her cheeks again and again, but it kept coming, the tears wouldn't stop, and she began to panic at the thought that she might never stop crying.

She might never stop.

It would never be better than this.

She wept and pressed her eyes into her raised knees, her fingers clutched around the duffle bag and its meager collection, and she sobbed. She sobbed.

It was never going to end. She'd been through this before - she knew loss. But this was - this was infinite - this was unrecoverable.

Oh God, why hadn't she been in the apartment when he got home? Why hadn't she been here?

She keened and choked on it, felt the crush of her spine against the wall as she rolled helplessly to the floor, her body shaking with grief.

It was never going to ease. It was never going to get better. He was never-

he was never going to come home again.

* * *

Where was Beckett?

She wasn't on his screen at his CIA apartment, and he knew that she was with Ryan - the real-time report from Deleware told him as much - but he didn't know where she was right this moment.

It was making him nervous. Had she found the notebook? Was she reading what he wanted to say to her, all the things - was she okay?

He made a fist and had to put his phone away; the alert on his computer had gone off. Search results.

The Senator's schedule lined up perfectly with their theoretical plan in three instances.

A dinner at the mayor's charity event in three days. A reception the following week for the representative from Monaco. And finally, the very next day, a meet and greet with a group of rising stars in the senator's political party.

All perfect opportunities to eliminate the threat. Cleanly, no fuss, no cause for scrutiny.

Castle put everything else out of his head and started doing his research.

The sooner he got this done, the sooner he got back to Beckett.

If she'd have him.

* * *

_Kate,_

_When I saw you for the first time, it was across a busy street. You were outside the Institute where Subbarao worked, and I was thinking about the best way to keep tabs on your investigation. And then you ran a hand through your hair and the line of your body against the grey day made my heart catch. Like an electric current went from where you stood to where I stood, connecting us. I told myself I was following you to discover where the dead woman had hidden our sensitive information, but I was following you because you had me. A line ran between us, and if I strayed, I felt it deep in my guts, how much I needed to get back to you._

_I feel it now. I need to get back to you. _

Reading this. . .she was not going to survive.

* * *

_In interrogation, oh, Kate Beckett. It was never really my interrogation, was it? You took over the moment I saw you cuffed to that chair. I wanted you. I wanted to have you. Because you already had me and I wanted you to feel it too. But instead, you played me so well; you got skills, Detective Beckett. I'd never met a woman who was my equal. You just kept - trying. You kept going. You didn't stop; you don't ever stop, Kate, and it made me fall in love with you._

She was going to read them all. She was going to hole up in his apartment for as long as it took.

But first she had to stand up. Dry her eyes.

And finish this.

Beckett clenched her fist around her detective's notebook and pressed it against her chest.

_ You don't ever stop, Kate, and it made me fall in love with you._

She stood up.

She dried her eyes.

And she salvaged what she could from her ruined life. Apartment. Her ruined apartment.

There was no salvaging her life. Not yet anyway.

* * *

His heart settled back into his chest when he saw her on the screen of his phone, fuzzy and indistinct in the long view from the front hall. But it was Kate. She was there.

The dog padded after her, leash trailing, and Kate seemed oblivious, but she spun back around and grabbed the wall to keep from tripping over Sasha. He saw her bend down and stroke the wolf's fur, release the leash, and he could see - now - that she had the notebook clutched against her chest.

Thank God.

She was in the kitchen now and he thumbed through the views until he could see her more clearly. She was in his sweatshirt still, and the jeans from yesterday - smears of ash went up her knees, coated the hem and sleeves of the sweatshirt. He frowned but he could see her opening a can of the good kibble - the expensive stuff - so she'd bought Sasha food at least.

Castle sat back at his work station and brought his phone closer, tried to make out her face in the shadowed kitchen. But he couldn't tell. She'd put the notebook next to her and kept coming back to touch it, and even though he'd written for hours yesterday while she slept in his bed without him, he was beginning to realize it wasn't enough.

It wasn't nearly enough.

A knock on his office door made his head jerk up and he saw the specialist enter with a slow nod.

"Agent Castle."

He didn't even have a name for the guy. "What am I calling you?"

"Smith is fine."

"No, it's not," he answered. "Jones work?"

"Jones works. I wanted to go over the delivery method with you."

Castle felt his phone burning hot in his hand, but he thumbed off the display and put it down.

_Do the job, then get Beckett._

* * *

He devised a system.

Castle worked on the plan for an hour and then he allowed himself five minutes to check the real-time video and scroll through Agent Deleware's summary reports of Kate's movements. An hour of work, five minutes to reassure himself about what he was doing this for.

After three hours, Deleware's summaries stopped coming in, so Castle went straight to the status updates from the agents in place. It adhered to the principles of social networking - live updates and contacts with various identities - but it wasn't nearly as nice-looking or as clean an interface as most public sites. A limited message could be posted with a variety of tags, and Castle kept the search tag up for Beckett's protective detail so he could read their shorthand.

And what exactly was Deleware doing for Agent Black that kept him away from the summaries?

Castle frowned to himself and made a note of the time, then went back to working on the delivery system Jones had explained to him.

In an hour, he'd check again, and then he'd hack into Del's computer.

See what was going on.

* * *

Beckett devised a system of rewards for doing what she knew she had to - must - do.

Just devising the system alone was work she wasn't sure she could do, but when she figured out how much she craved Castle's letters in that notebook, she made herself get her shit together.

A shower was on the list. She stripped off her clothes and perfunctorily washed, kept the notebook firmly in her mind's eye and nothing else. Nothing else. Nothing else. The bathroom did not smell like him, it was nothing. It was soap and it was shampoo and she was clean and she stepped out and dried off.

And then she crawled into bed and read his letter, shivering in the cold, and the dog curled up at her feet and she touched the words he'd written with her fingertips as if she could absorb them.

_Love, when I saw you standing at the end of the dock and you slowly took your shirt off - my breath stopped, my heart stopped, my whole body oriented to you. You are so beautiful, a gorgeous creature. To be there at the lake, the cabin, to be so frustrated by my limitations and the knife wound, but to feel your fingers across my shoulder or your mouth on my neck. And you were right - your dad showed me what a father should be to his child, how he should love. I will never forget that. I want that for ours, if we - I don't even have the words for that because it seems impossible, Kate. It seems so far away from now. But I keep the hope of us so tightly in my fist, I keep it in my memory and these letters and I know, I know, I know we will find our way. However it is, wherever it is. You and me, Beckett. Partners._

And Kate closed the notebook and knew that next, she had to call her father.

It might - it would undo everything. She would spend the whole time clutching the phone and digging her teeth into her lip to hold herself together, and then she'd hang up and she'd fall apart. She knew that; they'd done that before, she and her father.

At least it was taking up an old habit.

Beckett called her father.

* * *

She pressed her forehead harder against his hallway wall, her knees bruised as they buckled and slammed into the wood again.

"Dad, I'm sorry," she choked out.

"Oh, Katie. Katie, don't be sorry. Don't ever be sorry, just come. Just get a cab and come stay with me."

"I just can't. I can't," she moaned.

"You can. You shouldn't be alone. You know that I - of all people - know exactly what you feel right now."

Oh God, God, that made it worse.

"Katie, please."

"I can't. He - we were there together," she said finally, her voice hoarse with all the tears she wasn't going to cry.

Her father was silent for a long, long time. "I'll come to you."

"No. I need - I have to be alone. Dad, you - you know. You know how I am. I can't have anyone-"

"I know," he growled out. But he did know, because that was what had caused their problems the first time. "I know you do. Doesn't make it easier to let you go."

"I'm sorry."

"The promise still holds, Kate Beckett."

She sucked in a breath and tilted her head back. "The promise."

"I don't drink. You don't obsess. The promise still holds."

She closed her eyes and a renegade tear streaked down her cheek. "Promise, Dad. I promise. Still holds."

"Call me when you can manage it, sweetheart. Please. Just put me out of my misery."

Me too, she thought.

"Okay. Yes. I can - I will."

And then she hung up and sank down against the wall and cried.

For a very long time.


	4. Chapter 4

**Close Encounters 6**

* * *

The ringing of her phone startled her so badly that she bit her tongue, still curled up on his bed.

Kate groaned and checked the ID but blinked dumbly at the display before she realized it had to be one of the boys. 12th Precinct calling.

"Beckett," she rasped.

"It's Esposito. Beckett? You don't sound good."

"What have you got?" she said instead, sucking in shallow breaths to keep it together.

"Word came down that the bomb was part of contract fulfillment."

"What?" she gasped. "A contract. A hit."

"Bracken, we're pretty sure. Someone in his organization put it out."

"Oh my God."

"Two million for you. Two million for him."

She moaned and dropped her head into her hand. "There been a payout yet?" she said, and she heard her words as if they came from a distance.

"No. But don't worry. The CIA learned about it before us; they're working with the NYPD on security for you, Beckett."

"What do I care about security?" she growled. "You have to be on top of that payout."

His stunned silence made her press her lips together and take in a breath. She meant - she'd meant not - what had she meant?

"They've already - Castle is dead. What does it even matter what. . ."

"Beckett."

"I'm okay," she said quickly. "I'm fine. A protective detail?"

"CIA. They're already outside."

"How do they know where I a-"

She stopped, swallowed down a stupid question.

"All right. Espo. Thank you."

"You might want to call Lanie. She's pissed that I knew where you were before she did."

Right. Lanie.

But to do that, she wanted to read one of Castle's letters first.

* * *

Castle jerked when his phone vibrated with an alert. He thumbed the display on and read that the NYPD had been informed of the contracts out on their lives. Castle frowned when he realized that, once again, the update hadn't come from Deleware.

Okay, really. What was the man doing?

He put aside the tactical schematics of the mayor's home where the charity even would be, and he called up the ghosting program he and Eastman had written on a whim a few years ago. They'd wanted to snoop on the computers of a couple of assholes two pay-grades above them, and it'd worked scarily well.

Castle knew that his father was off-site for a meeting - most likely with a DC power player who Black was wheeling and dealing - but it came to him that Black might be doing more than just maintaining their black ops status with the politicians. Black might actually be working on deposing Bracken.

What the hell was Deleware doing?

When Castle called up the ghosting program and peeked in at Deleware's station, he was lost.

Code. Lines of code. He was building a program, but for what?

* * *

"Honey, I don't know what to tell you. I'm so sorry."

"Where did - did they say what they were doing with it?" Kate asked, heard the brokenness in her voice and couldn't even care.

"No," Lanie said quietly. "They just flashed their badges and took everything."

The fucking CIA had his remains. "Everything," she got out slowly.

Everything but the wedding band on its chain that Beckett held now against her chest. Her thumb fit through the ring and curled around it, so much space, loose and flopping back and forth over her knuckle.

"But, Kate. . .I - look. I don't know what to tell you, but last night after you called me. . ."

"Lanie, what?"

"I took a sample. I was supposed to wait. Agent SOB was very firm about leaving it untouched until his guys could come 'assist' me - you see how their assistance turned out, taking my remains and-"

Kate sucked in a tight breath and Lanie seemed to realize she'd gotten off track.

"I took a bone fragment and sent it to a friend with a lab at the Natural History museum."

"You did what?"

"She did some testing last night. Kate, honey. Those bones. . .my friend is telling me they look like - preliminary testing, is all - but they don't appear to be the bones of a forty year old spy in excellent health."

Beckett's hand dropped from the ring.

"What are you telling me?"

"I don't know what it means, Beckett. But don't - don't take this as - it's not proof. It's not anything. But Javier said I had to tell you. I had to - you had to know everything."

Not the bones of a forty year old man.

"He was a spy, Kate. He had a hard life. My friend said that could account for the way it looks."

A hard life. "He did. He was - all over the place. Tortured. Beaten." She closed her eyes. Not the bones of a forty year old man. "But he was - so fit. He was. . ."

Beautiful. Hers. Her spy.

He had been. He was no longer. He was ash and the bitter grief in her chest. He was those letters still unread in a notebook in her hand.

"Kate. You're at his place? Let me come over and spend the night."

"You know I can't."

"Let me anyway."

"I really can't."

"Then let me call you-"

"I won't pick up, Lanie. I can't. You don't even know what this is costing me right now. I'm - it makes me break apart."

"I know," he friend sighed. "Still hate not being there."

"I know. You and everyone else."

"Don't drown in this, Kate Beckett. You are the strongest woman I know."

Not tonight she wasn't.

Maybe not for the rest of her life.

* * *

Castle cradled the phone close to him and traced his fingertips over the outline of her form, curled in on herself in the kitchen. She was sitting with the notebook, the dog's head in her lap, her eyes tightly closed.

Tears streamed down her cheeks like she'd given up on stopping them.

Castle leaned over until his forehead rested against the workstation, took deep breaths as his eyes caressed her. If she could - he just wished so badly this wasn't how it had to be done.

Her eyes fluttered open and she was staring into the distance. Castle sat up, his breath catching, and he couldn't help pressing his finger to the line of her face, remembering how it felt to cup her cheek and guide her mouth to his, how she smiled that closed-lipped smile that spread against his skin as her hands sought his hips and brought him close.

On the video, Kate tilted her head as if leaning into his touch and her eyes drifted closed.

"Agent Castle?"

He jerked upright and glanced over the monitor to see Deleware standing nervously at attention.

"You wanted to see me, sir?"

He pushed his phone into his pocket and stood, gesturing to the empty desk chair beside his. "Sit."

Del looked flustered for an instant, but he sank down beside Castle's work station, fiddling with his tie.

Castle studied him for a long moment, let it stretch out, let the discomfort grow until he sat down as well and leaned in.

"You wrote a program for my father," he said quietly. "And I know what it does. You want to explain what's going on here?"

Deleware opened his eyes too wide, that nervous tell that meant he was about to lie, and then he nodded. "Sir, it's just a snoop. We'll put it into place on the senator's blackberry to ensure that he goes where his schedule says. So when you do your thing, we know exactly where he is."

Except Castle had already put the code through its paces and that wasn't all the GPS tracker was going to do.

"You wrote it for Agent Black. You give it to him already?" he asked, eyebrow lifted.

"Yes, sir."

Castle nodded; that was the truth. "Then that's all. And thanks for the updates on Beckett."

Deleware gave a huge sigh of relief and nodded too quickly, getting to his feet once more and hurrying out.

The little bug _would_ give them an accurate positioning on Bracken, yes. But it was also programmed to cull information from the Senator's personal emails and secure web browsing. There were portions of the code that Castle couldn't understand, where his knowledge hit its limit, but he'd gotten the idea that it was command language that would hijack the contents of a certain app.

What app, Castle had no idea. And why his father wanted the information - still had no clue. That his father was using the elimination assignment as a cover for some secret purpose - Castle had no doubt.

And that meant - what?

His father wanted something from Bracken and he was using Castle's 'death' to get it.

But what did that mean for Castle?

And for Beckett.

* * *

It wouldn't leave her.

The sense that there was - more. That something swirled just past her comprehension, or just under the eddies of her grief.

Sasha came to heel at her side and Kate ran a hand through the dog's fur, tried to let her body and mind relax enough to have it rise to the surface. It stayed stubbornly out of her reach though.

The body was gone. The - it wasn't even a body. Was that it? Kate couldn't feel like anything was real when the pieces she'd seen were just fragments. The charred remnants of clavicle and scapula. And even though her mind wrapped muscle and memory over those bones and fleshed him out, she couldn't complete it.

She couldn't let him go.

She felt him with her even here, standing stupidly in the middle of his kitchen with the overhead light making her eyes hurt so that she just - swayed. Lost.

Her fingers skimmed the dog's ear and she glanced down. The two of them, paired in grief. That was all this was - grief. It wasn't reality; he wasn't here. There were bones, there was the ring she still couldn't let go of.

There was no DNA to test against-

Oh. No.

_He had lived here_.

Right? Beckett tripped over the dog as she turned, stumbled against the counter and bruised her hip with a wince. She was damn worthless right now and she didn't even _know_ what she could possibly be thinking except-

Except - what if-

No. Stop. Just stop. God, please.

What if?

Bathroom. She trembled at the edge of the kitchen for a moment and then headed down the hallway and entered the bedroom. The light coming in through the window hit the clump of covers in the bed and for one brutal, breathless instant - it was him. It was Castle laid out in bed and she was knocked back by a wave of desolation so fierce that it flattened her.

She clutched at the doorway and bent over at the waist, closing her eyes to push it back. Not yet, not yet. She had to - toothbrush or hair. Something. Do this first. Do this.

Beckett forced her way inside the bathroom, stood shaking at the sink and refused to look at herself in the mirror. She had - there was no toothbrush but the one she'd ripped from the package this morning. She yanked open the drawers and found an electric razor.

Her breath caught but - she was trying to think. No root, no DNA. Damn it.

She leaned against the counter with her palms pressed flat, tried to breathe. This couldn't be - she could _not_ pin her hopes on this. There was _no hope_, Beckett. As Espo had told her yesterday, it was _already done._

Comb, brush-

Bathroom floor? The shower drain. Holy shit - the shower drain.

Kate jerked open the opaque door and kneeled down on the tile, got her fingers under the drain as she pried at it. Water drops soaked through the knees of her jeans, the sound of her breathing echoed harshly in the shower.

She just - she had to know. The bones of an old man or just a spy whose body had been abused for years?

She just had to know.

* * *

She called Lanie even as she wiped sweat from her forehead.

"Beckett? Honey, what's-"

"I have a hair. I mean - there's hair for DNA testing. From the shower. Can you-"

"Oh, God, Kate. I can't - the samples I took. It's not even - it's nothing. There's no way to do DNA from what I got - not now. The testing ruins them."

Kate felt it claw up her throat and clamor to get out. She squeezed her eyes shut and felt the throb in her fingers from where she'd pried up the drain. "Lanie."

"I never meant to make you think it could - oh, Kate. Kate."

"I just. I thought it would. . .help."

Her friend was silent on the other end and she sucked in another breath, opened her hand to look at her raw fingers. Blood was caked under her nails where the edge of the drain had sliced deep, and her knuckles were already bruising up. She closed her eyes and tried to regain some control.

"I'll let you go, Lanie."

She ended the call and breathed again, opened her eyes.

The dog stood before her, head cocked to look at her, and Kate heard that low whine in her throat again, wondered whose it was coming from - the dog or Beckett?

She should - there should be something. A list. She'd made a list. Shower, food, call her father, get it together.

Instead, she pushed her mangled hand into the pocket of her sweatshirt and pulled out the notebook. She hadn't realized how much he'd written; she hadn't really seen it since he'd backwards proposed to her in it, since he'd asked her to make it real.

Oh, Castle. Rick, it was always real. It was never anything less than everything.

She opened the notebook and read blindly the first thing that came to meet her eye.

_When I came up the stairs in that house in Copenhagen and the fire - when I saw the flames between us, Kate. Kate, I nearly - I would have walked through the fire to be with you on the other side. I would have gone straight in. But you were smarter than me; you kept me from it. You made me leave you there and go around outside. You made me leave you. And if you hadn't, we'd have both died. Because you made me leave you, because I did not go through that fire, we both survived. We can survive anything together, even if - for a moment - we're apart._

* * *

He told himself he couldn't keep watching; he couldn't do it. It wasn't helping their situation for him to pine after her, his phone held close to his chest and everything aching.

And when she'd finished off that last glass of wine and gathered her coat and keys and the leash, the dog's tail swishing, something had eased in him.

She wasn't staying cooped up in the fading light of his apartment; she wasn't closing herself off. At least not entirely.

He couldn't keep watching, checking obsessively for updates. He had a real job to do and now that the elimination assignment had been put into play, now that he and Jones were researching the best possible outcomes, he had work that needed to be done.

But first he called up his own father's service record and started searching.

For what, he was't exactly sure. He just had a feeling that this thing with Bracken had gone so far beyond just Beckett's mother's murder. Beyond even a case being made against a corrupt senator.

There was something else here. Something he couldn't see yet.

But he'd find it.

* * *

It'd taken three glasses of wine to have the courage to say _fuck it_ and come out here, do this. She had to do this. She couldn't sit still if she didn't know.

She figured - establish the timeline.

That's always how she found answers. Just put it all down, figure out what had happened and when.

Sasha pulled at the leash, and Kate realized she'd stopped still in front of the 12th, that her legs just wouldn't carry her inside. She pulled out her phone and guided the dog out of the flow of traffic, leaned against the building and waited until Ryan picked up.

"Ry," she said quickly. "Look, I need a favor."

"What do you need? Where are you, Beckett?"

"Actually, I'm downstairs. Outside. I've got the dog with me, so I won't go in, but can you-"

"Yes, of course, I'm on my way out anyway. Be there in five."

She hung up and pressed her back against the concrete facade of the 12th, realized she knew most of these people, that they were regarding her carefully and with no small amount of pity.

Thank goodness for that third glass. She'd tried to eat with it, but-

Sasha stood and wound around her ankles once and then came back to her side, sat back on her haunches, looking restless. Kate dipped her knees to brush the dog's fur, grateful for the way the wolf seemed to anchor her here.

"Beckett!"

She glanced up and Ryan was coming out of the front doors, looking somehow both anxious and relieved. She allowed the grip of his hand around her arm and the half-hug, but the dog had gotten between them and kept Ryan from doing more damage to her shaky self-control.

"Hey, boss. How are you. . .what do you need?"

She swallowed and gripped the leash a little tighter. "I just wanted to see how the investigation was going. Where are you guys at - I assume the fire department's inspector has been by to-"

"Beckett," he said suddenly, and his hand was on her arm again. "Beckett. I don't think-"

"No, Ryan, I'm okay. I promise. I just - you know me. I can't be out of it. I have to know the details."

But he was shaking his head, his eyebrows drawn in tight. "No, that's not the problem. The CIA took over our investigation, Beckett. They took everything with them. The forensics, the tapes I pulled from your lobby - which were blank anyway, so it's not like they got anything from them, but-"

"They were - what?" she said, something thick rising up in her throat. The CIA had the investigation. Well, of course they did. One of their own had been - the explosion was - it was all their case _anyway_, wasn't it? Castle had appropriated her mother's case and now this - this was what she was left with.

"The tapes were blank," Ryan said slowly.

"You didn't get - there was nothing to indicate who set that bomb in my apartment?"

"No, but - more than that. It was digital video from lobby security - which, honestly, Beckett, that place sucks. You have got to move-"

Ryan stopped with a sucked in breath and his eyes snapped to hers with something like horror.

She tried for gallows humor anyway. "I think I will, Ry. Kitchen needs too much work done."

He cleared his throat, nodding up and down, and he looked so uncomfortable that Kate reached out and smoothed the flap of his collar over his sweater.

"I'm okay, Ryan."

He nodded again, glanced up at her once more. "I - the video was black from the approximate time the bomb had to have been set until fifteen minutes after the first responders."

Fifteen minutes _after_? After the first responders? "You're saying our bomber stuck around and watched?"

Ryan shrugged. "I'm saying the digital video was just gone. About an hour's worth of information. Gone."

Had the CIA done that? Scrubbed it clean to protect. . .who? What? What could those tapes have shown except-

something they didn't want anyone to see.

"Beckett, what are you going to do?"

She turned her eyes to his and tried to let that easy, floating feeling the wine had given her finally drift back and fill her gaze.

"Nothing, Ry. I'm - there's nothing to do," she answered.

And then she walked away. He didn't seem to know how to follow her.

She walked away but there was a lot to do. There were questions now - and there shouldn't be questions. Not about this. There should be _no_ questions.

She was going to find the answers.


	5. Chapter 5

**Close Encounters 6**

* * *

"Heel," Kate murmured. Sasha sank to her haunches immediately, ears flicked forward and to the side while Beckett tied the leash to the bike rack outside.

She nudged the dog's head with her knuckles and got a lick of the dog's tongue, and something in her chest trembled like it might break.

Beckett hurried inside the corner pharmacy, taking note of their cameras mounted strategically over the intersection. She pulled the badge out of her blazer - she'd had to go buy a damn jacket and a clean pair of jeans. She'd had nothing and she couldn't possibly demand video looking like she had been.

She flashed her badge at the clerk on duty behind the photo desk and asked for a senior manager. She was eventually led back to what looked to be a break room and Beckett shook hands with an older balding man, a tight smile on his face.

"Mr. Beeker," she nodded. "Detective Beckett."

"What can I help you with?" he asked.

"I'm sure you know about the explosion in the building down the street."

"Yes, ma'am. Crazy - you're investigating the bombing? Was it terrorists?"

She shook her head. "I'm not at liberty to say, Mr. Beeker. But no. Not terrorists; I can assure you of that. But I was wondering if you had security surveillance of the intersection here?"

"Oh," the man said suddenly, his face flushing. "Yes. We do. I hadn't even thought of that. Let me see if I can figure out this damn computer. Might have to get Rusty in here to do it."

Beckett waited through the interminable fumbling of Mr. Beeker as he tried to maneuver through the simple video surveillance program on the computer in the back room. He did have to ask Rusty to the back - a kid of no more than nineteen who set everything up in moments and then called up the exact section of the time stamp for them to view.

"Do you mind if I-?" she said with a raised eyebrow.

Beeker hustled out a reluctant Rusty from the back room and Beckett sank down in front of the computer, her hands damp with sweat.

She made the computer play back at half speed, studying the foot traffic minutely. There was such a narrow window of time for that bomb to have been placed; she'd left for the park with the dog and then Castle had gotten back only twenty minutes later.

And before that? No, she couldn't - it wasn't possible that the bomb was in their oven before that. She'd made a chicken dish when they'd gotten back a few days before. They'd been gone so much that she'd been trying to use things before everything got freezer burned. And then takeout when she was alone, but still. . .

Oh.

Castle.

There he was.

She leaned forward, her fingers coming up to hover over the monitor. Castle stood with a group of pedestrians at the light, his eyes brilliant blue even in the crowd. The light changed and he crossed, her eyes hungrily following the smoothness of his gait and the determined set of his wide shoulders.

And then he was gone.

She smashed the space bar and the view paused, everyone arrested, and then she gave in and scrubbed back through the video until she saw him again.

Frozen on the screen, his head turned towards this side of the street, his mouth set into a curling smile. He'd been coming home to her, and look how happy-

She ran a knuckle under her eye, then the other one, wiping away tears, cleared her throat to get past it. She couldn't do this right now. She couldn't.

She let the video play through and kept watching.

* * *

He was relieved by the summary reports; he only checked them sporadically, not letting himself think too hard about it. She was at the 12th for a few minutes, talked with Ryan, and then she'd bought a change of clothes. Good, good, that was good. Drug store on the corner, then she'd gone to the morgue but again - she hadn't gone inside. Oh, the dog was with her, wasn't it? That explained it. Conversation with Lanie - this one as short as with Ryan.

But that was good. That was so much better. He could - he felt easier about it now. It was going to be fine. Eventually. She'd be okay.

And meanwhile, he'd found some oddities in his father's service record. They could be explained away by the natural closed-mouthed, tight-lipped nature of the CIA, but Castle was beginning to wonder.

Just as he'd done when they were first investigating Bracken, Castle took a page from Beckett's book and made a timeline. He posted the times and places and events that the two men had been involved with and he looked for inconsistencies and overlaps.

And he found a few more. . .oddities. He didn't have a better word for it.

Things that didn't make sense placed where they were.

* * *

She couldn't be certain. Couldn't be certain of what she'd seen on that video - not at all. But it replayed in her head over and over.

Lanie had tried to set her straight, but there were just too many things that didn't make sense. Odd socks.

Beckett just didn't - it didn't make sense. The CIA had taken over the case, okay, fine. But the hour of blank tape from her building's security?

And then the pharmacy video. The cameras were positioned to cover the two entrances - one to each street on that corner - and so of course the angles were bad. But in the top left corner of the video, Beckett could swear she'd seen Agent Black.

Heading away from her apartment building. He hadn't gone through the same crosswalk that Castle had only thirty minutes earlier, but instead he'd turned the corner and kept his back to the camera.

She couldn't be sure. She'd had her epic run-ins with the man but she couldn't be sure about his gait and build from a poorly angled camera twenty feet away.

But if it was him, what had he been doing there?

* * *

She sank to the park bench in jeans that scuffed the dirt and a blazer that was too loose on her shoulders. She hadn't been paying close attention, just grabbed what she could find. Her shirt was a nondescript white button down that didn't sit right across her chest.

Beckett leaned forward and pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, focused on breathing. The leash clanked loudly against the metal foot of the wooden bench and she lifted her head.

Sasha was running back to her.

Kate straightened up, a prickling awareness numbing her lips, her fingers, and the dog came straight for her and whined anxiously, turning towards some unknown threat as her hackles rose.

Kate stood and met the man coming up the path.

Black regarded her with steely eyes and a blank face, and then his gaze traveled carefully over her ill-fitting outfit and down to the dog.

Sasha growled once in her throat and pressed against Kate's leg.

"What's going on?" Beckett asked first.

Black lifted one thick eyebrow and reached out for her; she flinched and moved back but it was only a card in his hand.

"The memorial service," Black said. "Tomorrow morning."

"You - that's not up to you," she rasped.

"This is how it works," he replied, dismissing her and pressing the card into her hand. Her fingers closed over it without her permission. He regarded her a moment more and then turned around. Like he was going to _leave._

"No. Wait. What's going on? You took his - the body. You took it but it's not-"

Black pivoted on one foot, seemed completely unwilling to listen to her. "I have it under control."

She felt it clench in her, tightly, and she had to avert her eyes.

"But the tape was wiped clean," she added. "Ryan told me - he looked at it before your guys took everything. Why was the tape - and those bone fragments weren't the bones of a forty year old man. He was your son. Don't you-"

Black was stepping closer, something on his face that she couldn't fathom, couldn't understand except to say that it looked like -

pity.

"Ms. Beckett." He gave her a long look that seemed - seemed sympathetic. Like he was being _kind_ to her. "Richard is gone. The questions - whatever you think you've found - he's dead."

He was dead. He was really - there wasn't - she'd been building some ridiculous edifice of _hope_ on all these unanswerable, strange events when there was only - only this.

He was dead. If his _father_ was being civil with her, _nice_to her. . .

"The CIA service," she rasped, heard her voice crack and break away. "When is that?" She needed something else to focus on, needed to stop - feeling it. All of it. But when she heard nothing from the man, she looked at him.

"There is no service," he said quietly.

Her mouth dropped. "No. You - you wouldn't do that. Tell me when it is." And fuck, she didn't even know _where. _Eastman's - Castle had gone to that alone, but Carrie had been there, right? She'd ask Carrie.

"Ms. Beckett. There is no service."

"No," she cried out, stalking towards him. "You don't get to do that. To take him away from me like - like - it was nothing. He's not _nothing_."

"There is no service," Black said quietly, his voice pitched to a decibel that brooked no questions.

"Like hell there's not. He was your son. He's my - I will show up at your door every fucking morning until you tell me. I will call every reporter-"

In a flash, his fingers were gripping her wrist tightly, a grip that made her bones grind against each other. She welcomed it. Let him fucking break her arm. She wouldn't back down. She had a right - he was _hers_, he was _everything-_

"There is no such service," he said quietly. "And if you show up on Company premises, I will have you thrown in the deepest, darkest detainment facility. And you will miss his public memorial service as well as the next few years of your life."

Beckett realized suddenly that the dog was snarling, pressed tightly against her leg and snapping out at Black. Kate couldn't break his gaze, just let him release her wrist and step back, tug his jacket back into place.

And then he walked off.

That was it. That was all there was.

Castle was gone.

* * *

She stumbled when she saw the woman in the lobby of Castle's building. Lanie came to her then and wrapped her arms around Kate until the pressure of the embrace made her crack.

"Lanie, stop. Stop."

Her friend let her go and pushed Kate's hair back behind her shoulder. "I got your text. About the service. I've brought you something."

Kate wrapped her arms around her stomach and shook her head. "What."

"A dress."

She cut her eyes to the garment bag hooked over the stair banister and felt it coming up again, all the things she couldn't.

"How'd you find me?" she said quietly.

"Don't worry, Beckett," Lanie waved her off. "I ain't staying. Just brought you the dress."

Kate slid her eyes back to her friend and realized she'd hurt her. She'd hurt her friend. She had no idea how to make it right, though.

Lanie sighed and shook her head, and then she reached in and hugged Kate again, despite the stiffness to Beckett's shoulders and the tremble that seemed to make cracks in her whole being.

And then Lanie left and there was the dress and tomorrow.

And tomorrow.

And tomorrow.

Without him. But so much still with him.

* * *

She found the wine, a dusty bottle but a good vintage, and she needed it.

She wandered to the bedroom and the dog followed. She pulled the closet door open and ran her fingers over the top shelf; she was avoiding the one thing she wanted by exploring the things she didn't know.

A nail, the scuffled clumps of dust, a box. She tugged it towards her by the lid and popped it open.

His weapons. Of course. He had guns in his closet because he was - had been a spy. She pressed the lid down and pushed it back onto the shelf, stared sightless into the emptiness of his closet. All of his stuff had been mixed with hers, and the closet in her bedroom had been filled up with his black shirts and his suits, and the flannel shirt she'd appropriated, the expensive shoes.

Was it worse to have it - gone? Was it better?

She turned away from the closet and canted towards the bed, let go of the clenched fist of her control and slipped under the covers, opened the notebook to read the last one. The very last letter he'd ever write to her.

_I have a dream for us. I have dreams. They're a million different realities, other earths waiting. We have a son, we sleep in late on Saturdays and take him to the park. On Sunday you try to distract me from finishing the crossword puzzle, on Monday we do our normal jobs, our normal lives, argue about money and disciplining the kid and who has to take the dog out. Friday is date night and your dad baby-sits and we joke about trying for a second, but we both think - maybe this time. All these dreams because of you, because you opened me up beyond my abilities. Now, anything is possible, Kate. I love you._

* * *

"Oh, Katie," her father whispered, standing in the entrance of the apartment in his best suit.

She leaned hard into him and pressed her face into his shoulder, damming up her tears against his shirt.

"I don't know what to do for you, sweetheart."

She shook her head against him and felt the dog butt against the back of her thighs, stumbling her forward into her father. She felt the choke of hysterical laughter and strangled it down, lifted her head to look at him.

"Let's go, Dad," she said quietly. Sasha pushed up against her again and her father glanced down to the dog, eyebrows knit together.

"Kate. What are you going to do?"

"What I have to," she murmured back, pressing a hand over her eyes and struggling to keep it back. She felt strange in the dress Lanie had given her, the shoes that rubbed at the backs of her heels, and then the dog. . .

"All right, okay," he said finally. "I've got the truck outside - parked a few blocks down, like you asked."

She nodded tightly and her father stepped away. She saw then that his eyes were tense and grey with his own grief. And not just for her. He had loved Castle too.

"I know you - and he. . ." But she didn't know what else to say, or how to make the words come out. That'd always been their problem. When her mother had been murdered, she and her father had floated on their own lonely islands of grief.

But she didn't know how to close that distance now either.

Not when every movement ached.

* * *

Castle was clear on one thing: his father and Bracken had a history. He'd gotten nowhere on the research, and every time he teased out a thread, he'd been met with a brick wall.

It'd been carefully covered. Professionally covered. He'd been working around the clock, and he was just now coming up for air when he realized his phone hadn't alerted him in ages.

Castle called up the summaries from Deleware and skimmed the information. She'd gotten out yesterday, Lanie had come by, Ryan had talked with her, she'd stayed in the apartment that night, took Sasha to the park, was in bed by nine - which was a little early, yes, but-

He got to the last summary report and froze, then he checked the time.

She was at the memorial service. She'd brought the dog.

Shit, Beckett had brought the _dog_ to the funeral?

He staggered up from his chair and hit the door at a run then headed down the hallway to the command center. Black was nowhere around, maybe at the memorial service, and Castle toggled through the sources on the main computer, looking for the camera that had the footage from inside the funeral home.

And then there she was.

A black dress, deep vee, her hair half pulled back, her shoes a pair he'd seen before so they must have survived the damage. Her eyes were closed; she sat on the front row, knees pressed together, her hands tucked tight up under her ribs like she was physically holding herself together.

He sank into the desk chair and stared at the image projected on the far wall, her form swallowing him up.

Oh, Kate.

The dog was hidden under the row Beckett sat on; he saw only the peek of Sasha's muzzle as feet walked past, offering Kate condolences. At her right was her father, and the ragged _lostness _in the man's eyes made Castle scrub at his face with both hands.

And then his mother.

Martha Rodgers had come to his funeral.

Who. . .who had even told her?

And, oh God, Kate - as she half rose and embrace Martha and the way her eyes closed and stayed that way.

Suddenly the view shifted as the agent with the lapel camera moved, and Castle broke away, put his head in his hands.

No more torturing himself. He had to stop. He had work to do; he was going to finish this so that he never - he never had to see that look on her face, she never had to endure this kind of grief and brokenness ever again.

Never.

* * *

Carrie clutched her fingers and didn't try to hug her, for which Kate was grateful. The well-wishers milled around, obviously not understanding who Carrie was or what Beckett was doing. She didn't care; she found empathy in the woman's eyes.

Sasha came to Carrie in an instant, nosing into her hand and wagging her tail in that slow arc. Carrie bent down and loved on the dog, giving Kate a moment to take a breath, gather herself in.

When Carrie lifted up again, she regarded Kate with knowing eyes. "You're coming home with me."

"What?" she stumbled out.

"It's over, Kate. This is the end of it. You need things - around you. Not people. Just things. And if I knew Richard at all - his place is scary empty, isn't it?"

Beckett couldn't speak, could only nod at the woman.

"Then you're coming home with me." Carrie reached out and took the bag Kate had found in his closet and had been using as something of a purse, a clutch, but Carrie didn't try to take the leash from her.

Kate was grateful.

She was also grateful for the silence that stretched between them as Carrie drove her out of the city. Endless sunlight flickered through the window, coming and going until the buildings thinned and it was just the long line of the interstate and the unraveling of Kate's own heart like a ribbon.

* * *

Kate sat on the back porch with her bare toes in the grass that came right up to the steps. Her fingers were chilled and the glass of iced tea was still full and resting by her hip; she couldn't manage to want it.

Black had been so. . .nice to her. A hand on her arm, guiding her to a seat. No words, just -

Castle was gone; he was really gone.

The dogs were playing together just past the trees, their barks echoing in the warm air. Kate wrapped her arms around her knees and put her cheek against her shoulder, took in a breath.

That was one.

And now another.

It was a miracle, how the breaths kept coming. Just when she expected to never be able to breathe again, to never take a clean gulp of air into her lungs, there it came.

"Kate."

She turned her shoulder and glanced at Carrie coming through the porch; the woman had a dish towel in her hand and she swiped it along the railing as if knocking off a fly.

"Kate, how about-"

"I can't," she said preemptively.

Carrie paused but then nodded and sat down beside her. "I know that too."

Kate drew her arms tighter around her knees and suddenly saw the whole thing clearly. "I'm - not good at people knowing - at being close. And that's not fair to you, your hospitality. I should-"

"Kate, love, you don't have to be or do anything," Carrie said calmly. And just the way she said the endearment, how naturally it rolled off her tongue, Kate had the sudden realization that Castle had - well - borrowed it. He'd been a part of their family and he'd heard the way Carrie and Eastman had talked to each other and he'd used the only word that ever meant anything good and right and pure about love.

For her.

She feathered her fingers over her cheeks, swiping one tear after another, but she couldn't catch up, couldn't hold on to them.

Carrie said nothing but pressed her shoulder to Kate's and sat with her in the noon light.

* * *

"I can't do this," she said suddenly.

Carrie startled beside her and Kate took in another breath, since it was there.

"I'm done," she said again, nodding to herself. She stood up and opened her mouth to call the dog, but Sasha was rolling in the grass under the tree and Kate paused.

This was really the wolf's home. And Kate didn't know where her home was.

"Carrie, can you keep Sasha here for me? My place is. . .just until I figure things out."

"Of course."

She turned to find Carrie standing at her side, eyebrows pulled together. Kate nodded again and stood there a moment, then realized she had to call a cab. She pulled out her phone but there was no service.

"I'll call a cab," Carrie said finally. "Or you can take the truck."

Kate blinked and lifted her head to see the rusted Ford in the driveway just past the barn. She shook her head. "I'd - no. Thank you. Just a cab. Please."

Carrie went into the house and Kate watched Sasha flip up to her feet and pad across the pasture towards the Eastman's dog, the two of them taking off at a run.

Kate turned but didn't follow Carrie into the house.

She couldn't stay here.


	6. Chapter 6

**Close Encounters 6**

* * *

Castle stared at the summary and couldn't fathom what it meant.

He called up the individual status updates and scanned the lines of text, searching for meaning in the words. Beckett had gone home with Carrie for a few hours and then she'd come back to the city in a cab, alone.

He didn't understand, but maybe it was what she needed. Beckett was - she had always been such a singular, reserved person; her passion was deep once it'd been tapped, but that made the abandonment all the worse.

He'd abandoned her - through death or through this damn plan of his father's. Either way, Castle wasn't being the partner she needed.

He had to get to the bottom of this. His father had some ulterior motive for all of this and the more he looked, the more he recognized that there were things in Washington that Castle knew nothing about. Deals being made and broken. For what, he didn't know.

So Castle put away the reports on his wife and started calling in favors from people he knew, people in positions of power.

"Yes sir, this is Richard," he began. The man on the other end of the line seemed to stumble over his words so Castle went on. "This has to be between you and me, sir. I'm working on an operation that required my - death."

He just hoped he could find the answers before the elimination assignment started.

He only had twelve hours to finalize it and present the plan to his father, and he'd better have come up with _something_ tangible before then.

* * *

Kate stared blindly at the upended wine bottle but nothing more came out.

She huffed a breath and put it in the sink, took the almost full glass with her as she made her way for the bathroom. She sipped it slowly, focusing on the job at hand, and opened his linen closet.

She snagged a ratty washcloth and brought it up to her nose, cautiously sniffed. Slightly soured, but not too bad. It would do. Kate took a deeper draught of her wine and pressed the back of her fingers to her mouth, swayed on her feet.

She was fine. She wasn't going to think about it.

She set the glass on the counter of the bathroom sink and kneeled down beside the jacuzzi tub. Beckett wanted a bath and oblivion, but this thing was coated in a layer of dust and grime. He'd not been back here in at least a year, not that she remembered anyway, and the last time she'd seen this tub was after the fun they'd had with maple syrup.

She was trying really hard not to think about that.

She ran the washcloth around the lip of the tub and yeah - yeah, it was sticky too.

_Don't think about it._

Kate opened the hot water tap, let it run while she turned back to the cabinets under the sink and searched for cleaning products. She took another sip of wine, blinked into the dim interior of the cabinet, trying to focus. She found a surface cleaner in bright purple and pulled it out; this would have to work.

She needed a damn bath.

She finished the wine and set the empty glass down on the counter and then she moved purposefully to the tub, armed only with a threadbare washcloth and a purple spray bottle.

She needed more wine.

* * *

Scrubbing the bathtub had been good. She'd needed that. And while the vodka burned as it went down, it seemed to work much better than the bottle of wine she'd emptied. So she put the vodka and her glass nearby and prepared herself for it.

Beckett stepped into the full bath and let the water close over her ankles and inch up her calves. She sank down slowly until she was seated, and then she eased back to lean against the sloped sides of the jacuzzi.

With the heat pressing down on her chest and wrapping around her body, Kate finally closed her eyes.

She had realized, sitting on Carrie's back porch, that she was waiting.

Waiting for him.

She had been waiting this whole time for Castle to walk back in the door.

He'd gone away, and he just wasn't back yet. She'd been telling herself that ever since she'd shown up at her apartment to find it teeming with firefighters and cops, telling herself that to keep the desolation from opening a mouth inside her and swallowing her up.

When all those questions had come up, it was just - affirmation that she'd been right. They'd lived together for over a year and he'd spent half that time away from her - on a mission or an assignment, working around the clock, overseas and out of reach - and then appearing like magic at her front door, or already on her couch, or sleeping in her bed.

She was used to the alone part of things; she enjoyed having the space. And for the last couple days, she'd switched off her reality and functioned as the rooted half of their partnership.

But Castle wasn't coming home.

His father - Black's _kindness_ had convinced her. He had never lied to her, and though his truth had often cut, he had never been anything other than honest.

There was no conspiracy; Bracken had not kidnapped her partner.

Castle was dead.

And tonight - she was giving herself permission to feel it.

He was dead; he was dead. He had come home for the last time.

* * *

Kate floated in and out of her own consciousness. She was aware - at some moments - of the feel of the glass in her fingers as she swallowed a mouthful of vodka, of the creeping chill in the water, of the ache in her neck as she laid there.

And then she'd rouse, pour another glass, open up the faucet and the drain at the same time, let the cold slip out and the hot fill up. Once she was set again, she'd close the bottle, close the faucet, and sink back down into it.

Each breath was long and loud in the dull quiet of water in her ears, and she slipped back even farther, let the water lick along her chin and cheeks, touch the corners of her eyes to mingle with the tears that still leaked out.

She thought about nothing; she thought about her mother.

The way she smelled. The darkness behind Kate's eyes reminded her of the night she'd cuddled in close, too old to cuddle - already a teenager, and how her mother had drawn her in with a laugh, allowed her the closeness despite the fact that no one in her family really touched like that. It had been a movie her mother had warned her not to see, the images hadn't left; she'd wanted that moment on the couch curled together to banish them.

Kate breathed.

The way the edges of her grief had smoothed with time, with the last decade and more of carrying it around like a stone. Repeated handling had worn away the sharp and jagged pieces of her mother's absence.

But Castle. Rick.

She choked and pressed her hand over her eyes.

He was - going to be different, she could already tell.

Not having him, not - the lack of him had made her jagged again, all those pieces. All the edges were scraping her raw once more. And now it wasn't just the hole, the absence, but the progression of time stretching out ahead of her.

After her mother's death, Kate had never disbelieved that she'd continue on. The_ way_ she'd continued might have altered drastically - the path had been reworked completely, but it had still existed. Time was brutal and relentless but it didn't stop. It existed.

That, in itself, had forced Kate's perseverance.

This?

There was nothing past this. There was Rick and then there was - there was nothing.

And she couldn't see how she was still alive. Or why. It didn't make any sense. There was Rick, there was everything, and then -

Fire.

And everything was made nothing.

She lifted the glass to her mouth. It was empty. So Beckett hung her arm over the lip of the bathtub, and she released it from her fingers, and she let it drop.

She heard it bounce against the side of the tub and then shatter on the floor as it hit.

She closed her eyes and sank deeper into the bath.

* * *

Kate had slipped under the water before she even knew she was losing consciousness, opened her eyes in surprise and instead of pushing back up, she stayed.

She stayed there a moment, in the echoing and muted tremble of water around her. The tears were pressed back into her eyes and she felt the soft touch of her hair floating around her face, the sound of her heart beating slowly in her ears and the leak of the faucet into the tub.

She opened her mouth and felt the water pushing in, eager for space it hadn't yet filled. Her nostrils flared and she paused, a heartbeat stilled somewhere, and how good it felt to be nothing, to join that blank and black chasm of nothing, to have no movement and no need and no feelings swirling around.

And then her lungs began to burn.

The flame of agony licked fire in her chest and the wild panic of his eyes as he'd stared across the fire from her in a house in Copenhagen, and she reflexively sucked in a breath.

Beckett jolted up out of the water, choking and sputtering, gagging on water that seemed to rake its nails through her lungs. She clutched the side of the tub and drew her knees up only to vomit water and stomach acid and vodka onto the tile.

Tears streaked down her face and she stumbled out, tripping onto her hands and knees, grunting in pain and sucking down air, and crunching on glass as she tried to stand, and failed.

She was wet and shivering and bleeding and on her knees in vomit and glass, and holy fuck, how damn pathetic, just kill her. Just fucking get it over with.

But she still lived.

Beckett sobbed through the last of the convulsions, the water coming out her nose and mouth now, a horrid rasp in her chest and throat as it burned. She crawled across the threshold to the bedroom and got a foot under her, stood up slowly, using the wall for support.

Still she lived.

She closed her eyes and counted until she reached fifty, counted again until she'd reached one hundred, her breath labored and her throat closing reflexively, but she could still breathe. Her lungs worked.

And since she still lived, she took stock of the damage.

* * *

Her hands shook as she pulled the tshirt over her head, leaving her hair in a wet, tangled rope down her back. She found a towel and moved back into the bathroom, kneeled down to sweep everything into a pile. After too-long a moment, she realized she was bleeding from a hundred cuts and she was still crying.

Fuck, she couldn't even do _grieving_ well.

She left the towel in a clump of glass and blood and vomit on the floor and she got back to her feet and stepped carefully to the sink.

Don't look in the mirror. Just don't.

She ran water over her hands and forearms, wincing as the blood trickled down into the sink, pink and incongruent. Beckett stared into the bowl and then shut off the water, tried to figure out what next.

But there was no next. There was just - this.

She turned and headed back for the kitchen, jerking when she stepped on a stray piece of glass, twisting the arch of her foot towards her to see. A gash, and the blood seemed to ooze out like string.

Kate shook her head and limped the rest of the way, trying to figure out what she needed.

Her body throbbed and she just - she just wanted to sleep, and forget, and not have the image of him in that house fire, not have any of those images in her head ever again.

She stood in the middle of the kitchen and turned slowly, seeking. . .

what?

She felt the pulse of heat in her arms and legs and glanced down, saw the blood dripping from her fingers.

Oh.

That couldn't be good.

She needed. . .a dish towel. Was there - here. Here, a dish towel.

Becket wrapped it around her arm and clutched it against her chest, opened another drawer and found an unopened bottle of scotch, the amber liquid so golden and soothing to her eyes.

If she could sleep - she just needed sleep. Whenever she'd had a chest cold as a child, her mother had given her a finger of whiskey to ease the congestion, break it up so she could breathe easier and finally get to sleep. It had always worked.

Beckett reached for it, unscrewed the top to the beat of the dull pain in her fingers. She felt her back hit the counter and she took a healthy chug, its malt flavor burning clear through. Her knees trembled and she let the weight of her body pull her down to the floor, cradling the bottle against her chest.

She laid her arm out across her thigh and peered at the towel covering her wrist; the blood seemed to have stopped, at least for now.

She let her head rest in the corner where the counter met the wall and closed her eyes again. In moments, she was stuck at the surface edge of sleep, dreaming of fire, the images like flashes of lightning, illuminating the broken glass of her grief and how it cut.

The house and the bright, sharp stench of linseed oil and the way the fire roared across the walls and collapsed the hall - only now it was her apartment, it was their home, it was him. The body in the flames like a moth, like a wick, catching and consumed.

He was burning and she couldn't wake up.

* * *

Castle hung up the phone and leaned back in his hair, hands clasped behind his head as he slowly blew out his breath.

Not good. It was all beginning to add up.

Rumors were coming to him now, people were telling him things like they were eager to let out all the dark secrets. Since he was technically dead, he was safe, it seemed. And now he knew. Now he saw the whole thing clearly.

What Black was doing. Why he'd never been surprised that day Castle had told him who he and Beckett believed to be behind her mother's murder. Why Black hadn't even batted an eye, hadn't researched and investigated it on his own-

His father was next in line to run the CIA.

And Bracken was blocking the appointment.

Castle sucked in another deep breath and stared at his computer screen. He felt the phone burn in his hand and he realized he hadn't checked the summaries or status updates in hours, let alone looked in on Beckett.

Fuck, what was his father playing at? Was he just grabbing the perfect opportunity as it came to him? Was Castle just some poor pawn in a final gambit for the ultimate power?

He unlocked his phone and opened the summaries: Beckett was reported to still be in the apartment. Bland, just the facts. He skipped the agent status updates - they'd be more of the same, and he went directly to the apartment feed.

He sat back in his chair as the cameras loaded, rubbed at his jaw with a tired hand. He closed his eyes for a moment, his thoughts churning, and when he opened them again, he could see the blank and empty bed.

He cycled through the camera angles slowly, searching for her, and frowned when he saw the full bath, but no Beckett, a pile of towels on the floor and something. Hard to make out. He didn't see the dog by the front door either, and the living room was empty.

Castle switched applications for a moment, searched back through the summaries to see if he'd missed something. No, it was all here. She'd come back to the city in a cab, alone.

His heart thudded hard in his chest in warning and he even though he knew it was stupid and pointless and would only serve to torture himself, Castle went back to the beginning of the video. The cameras had motion sensors and switched on automatically to record the moment she entered the building, so it was easy to go back to his queue and start the feed from the beginning.

Her hair was falling down as she pushed open the lobby door with her key still in the knob. She struggled with the lock for a moment and then yanked it out, and he saw her hand tremble as she lifted it to push back her hair. He skimmed his finger over the image and scrubbed through the scenes of her entering the stairwell, climbing the steps, reaching the apartment door.

Wait. Wait, Agent Deleware had said it twice in his report - _alone_ - as in, no Sasha. The dog was gone. Left at Carrie's. Beckett was alone.

Unease trickled through his veins like ice water, but he zipped through the video again, watching her wander the hallway, watching her look lost and small as she stepped out of her shoes and just stood there.

She was breaking his heart.

He had already broken hers.

When Kate finished the wine and cleaned out the bathtub, he couldn't help a flicker of a smile, knowing she was just going through her best coping skills - industrious and goal-oriented Beckett doing a job, getting something accomplished, and then taking a bath. He laughed a little when she brought the bottle of vodka in with her.

Watching her in the dim light, the rise of her breasts in the water, the flush of her cheeks from the heat, Castle rubbed a hand down his face and wished he was there, wished he'd stood up to his father and found a different way.

And then he realized her shoulders were shaking, and she was dipping down under the water; she was crying.

She was crying. He'd done that to her.

And even if his father was engineering some power play to put himself in control of the CIA, what did it matter if Castle could actually end this once and for all? If he could come to Beckett and say, I've finished it. It's done. We're free. Bracken will never touch us again.

And then the glass shattered on the floor and his breath caught.

Castle leaned in, hunched over the small screen of his phone, and it wasn't enough. He wanted her image to fill the whole room, to fill his senses, and so he propped his phone against his keyboard and downloaded the app to his work station computer.

Grimly, he called up the block of video he wanted, started it at the same time stamp, maximized the view so that his whole display was only Kate. Only her.

She sank down deeper into the water, the ripples coming back to stroke along her face, wash over her lips, touch the corners of her eyes. He had a strange view of her, just the left hand side of his screen from the camera inset in his light fixture, and so her profile seemed to float - as large as his hand when he reached up to touch her.

Suddenly she was slipping underwater, sliding right to the bottom with her eyes open and staring straight up. His breath caught and held, trapped in his lungs, but she didn't come up; she didn't come up.

She didn't come up.

"Kate."

He didn't know what happened next. An explosion of movement and then she was vomiting over the side, her body wracked with spasms, and she tumbled to the floor and he saw the blood, all the blood, and she just seemed to crawl through it like it wasn't even - like she felt nothing.

He was so horrified that he couldn't move, not at first, and then he violently scrubbed back through the video to see, just to _understand_, and he saw it.

Eyes closed, fingers splayed, hair floating around her face like a mermaid, she opened her mouth.

And breathed water in.

Oh God. Oh God, Kate.

She'd done it on purpose.

Castle jerked to his feet, his knee slamming into his desk and throbbing, tripping him up. He jabbed off his computer and switched back to the video app on his phone, growing antsy when it took too long to load, already half shrugged into his jacket. He stalked to the door of his office, flung it open even as he synced up to the real time video. He navigated through the cameras until he found her.

On the floor in the kitchen in just a tshirt, blood-soaked and unconscious.

He stared at the screen, felt his stomach drop, his feet falter.

Kate.

God. No. What was she-

He jerked and stumbled backwards, hit the edge of the door frame with a harsh jolt. His brain rattled but he stared at the image, persistently stable in its terrifying clarity.

Fuck this. He was done. He was getting her; he was telling her the truth.

Black wanted to play some fucking game and Castle's_ wife_, his partner was - he was destroying her with this charade.

* * *

He had to park the damn Range Rover three blocks from the apartment, cut through the park at a run even though it drew a whole lot of fucking attention-

And then he stopped at the treeline, panting, his better judgment falling over him in a crashing wave.

He couldn't - he'd put her in danger if he waltzed back in there like this. There were most definitely eyes on her - not just CIA and NYPD team members, but also Bracken's men. If he showed up, he made this whole thing worthless, and if he could salvage anything at all from it-

He owed her that. The chance to actually end this was still alluring, but he couldn't not go to her.

He had to be smarter though. He had to go in the back entrance and keep himself hidden. It was full dark and that helped, but he had this burning anxiety flaming in his guts; he had to get to her. He had to - she could be-

Castle hustled back to the Range Rover and hunted in the storage area, looking for help, cover, something. He found an army jacket, well used and patched, and he shrugged that on over his own coat so that it bulked him up, distorted his shape. There was an army cap as well, and it sank low over his brow; he angled it so that it pulled to one side and changed the shape of his face.

His shoes were too fancy for what he needed, but he had an idea now, so he slammed the doors shut again and headed for a dumpster at the end of the alley. Lifting the lid with a grunt, Castle peered inside and scavenged for props.

A stained piece of cardboard was mashed against the side, so he pulled it out, held it against his chest as he continued searching. One trash bag was spilled open and what looked like an artist's collage scraps had tumbled out. He grabbed a few funky-smelling rags and tied them over his shoes.

Kate had taught him that the best way to hide was to seek out attention. The more people looking at you, the less likely you were to be noticed. Especially if it was undesirable attention. A homeless guy shuffling through the back alleys would cause most people to look away or not even see him at all.

With the cardboard tucked under one arm and a half-empty trash bag in the other hand, Castle took began the long walk back to his building, ambling when he was in plain view, but hustling when he was under cover of the trees once more.

He took a breath at the edge of the park and hunched his shoulders, dropped his head, and moved forward. He hadn't spotted any stationery vehicles, any suspect loiters, but he wasn't going to take chances.

When he'd made it to his former building, Castle shrank back into a doorway across the street from the back entrance, giving himself a moment to survey his surroundings. His chest was tight and the army jacket felt like it was cutting off circulation in his hands, but he made himself take the time, made himself settle down and pay attention.

When a few minutes had gone by with nothing suspicious, nothing out of the ordinary, Castle surreptitiously checked the video feed on his phone. Beckett was still there, where he'd last seen her, and so he entered in the code to kill the cameras inside.

And then he walked across the street and into his building.

* * *

Why the fuck did he not have a key? How the hell had he been so fucking idiotic? Castle slammed against the door of his apartment once more and felt the wood splinter.

He had the key to the back entrance but this one had been on a key ring in her junk drawer in the fucking kitchen and fuck-

Nothing for it.

He pulled out his weapon and gripped it by the butt, tried to still the rage pounding in his chest.

No. One more time. Give it one more-

Castle stepped back, holstered his gun, and then ran full tilt into the door.

He cursed as his shoulder popped but the door frame splintered and gave with a crack. Castle fell inwards and caught himself, sucking in a breath as his shoulder ached, but the worst of it was Kate.

Curled on the floor of his kitchen, her back pressed into the cabinets like she'd been trying to make herself as small a target as possible.

And in all that racket, she hadn't even woken.

Castle ripped the jacket off and sank down at her side, curled his fingers around her neck and eased her upright. She had a pulse, slow and thumping, but steady. He could see her chest lift with her breaths and he felt the wild thing in him diminish. Her body twitched and he slid the jacket around her shoulders, his heart pounding so hard it filled his mouth; no words could escape.

He sat her up and laid her against his chest, cradled her forearm in his large hands, rotating her arm until he could see the gash. It was smaller than he'd thought, more shallow too, and he felt his lungs catch and ease, a breath whistling out.

"Kate," he sighed. Her knees were bloodied, and he reached out to skim his fingers over the wounds, winced as shards of glass snagged his skin. "Oh, Kate."

He felt her stir, felt her body stiffen against his, and brought his hand back to her face, tenderly cupped her cheek.

Her eyes opened.

* * *

A shadow loomed over her, resolving slowly, the flaming face coalescing into a dark husk with two eyes and she jerked, yelling, hoarse and panicked, yanking out of the clutches of her nightmares.

It came after her and she smacked hard into the cabinet, grunted at the taste of blood against her tongue, scrambling back, everything shaky and spinning until the bile rose in her throat.

"Kate. Kate, honey, please-"

Her spine connected sharply with the edge of the oven and she cursed, arched with a cry, and he was on her, burning and fierce, and she blocked him with her forearms until it all came rushing fatally in.

"Castle," she gasped, fists loosening, heart pounding.

"I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry," it said, the mouth his, the eyes his, the everything. The everything of him surrounding her and drawing her up.

She froze, breath suspended, time collapsed, and felt the press of his face against her neck. Like always.

"I'm not dead," he moaned. "I'm not - I had to fake it but I couldn't - you were - I'm so sorry, Kate, please, please forgive me."

She struggled against him to see, to just _see_, but he was clutching too tightly and gripping her by the back of her neck, fingers tangled with her hair and she mewled in frustration and he dropped her.

A grunt flew out of her mouth, but her body and her hands were already unfurling towards him, up on her knees to frame his face and stare into those anguished, beautiful eyes and he circled his fingers around her wrists and hung on.

"Castle," she gasped.

"I'm so sorry."

She launched herself into him, toppled him back with the force of it, wrapping her arms around his neck and holding on, her thighs bracketing his ribs.

And with her mouth sealed against his, she took, took everything.


	7. Chapter 7

**Close Encounters 6**

* * *

"Kate, you're bleeding. You're bleeding, love," he was saying, all against her skin even as she pressed tighter, closer, needing closer.

She bit his shoulder to prove the substance, to taste the ghost, and sucked at his collarbone, pushing off his shirt until it tangled with his jacket at his wrists. He groaned and arched into her, but she twisted the material in her fist and drew his arms behind him, painful and awkward, and maybe, maybe she was punishing him.

She thought maybe she was. He deserved it.

She rocked her hips against him and kept one hand in a tight fist in his shirt and pressed her kiss against his sternum, skirted away from his questing mouth so she could go for his belt.

"Kate," he shouted, his body jerking into hers and his eyes slamming shut. He ripped his hands free of his shirt and jacket, gasping and hauling himself up, dislodging her from her work at his pants. "Kate, shit, you can't - your hands, you're bleeding. Please."

She just - wanted him. She'd been certain she'd never have this again and now here he was, dream or devil, at her mercy on her kitchen floor, and she curled her fingers around his ribs and skimmed her palms up his back and touched her tongue to his neck.

His hands cupped her cheeks, his breath loud in her ear, but he pushed her back, resolutely back, and stared at her like he was drowning. She knew the feeling.

"Kate. Let me get the glass out of your knees, check your hands and your wrist."

"The glass?"

His fingers dropped to her thigh and feathered behind her knee, and it was like his touch brought the feeling back to her body, all of it aflame and singing with pain.

"Ahhh," she hissed, closing her eyes and gripping his arms. "Fuck. I broke a glass."

A laugh tore out of his throat and she opened her eyes, found him staring at her, his hands too tight and squeezing, and the look of desperation on his face made her want him. So bad. So bad.

She pushed a hand between them and fumbled for his belt and zipper, heard his breathless curse against her forehead. He hiked her knee higher around his waist and she bit back the sting of pain that laced through her blood, instead rocked her hips harder against him.

"Kate," he groaned.

"Take me to bed, Castle. Or just fucking take me here. I don't care."

She pulled away just enough to see his face, finally unzipped him, and he growled, low and dangerous, and then he wrapped his arms around her and stood in one forecful movement.

"I'm taking you," he muttered.

* * *

"Fuck," he groaned out, heart ragged and wild and still unable to come down. Damn it, he hadn't even gotten them to the bed, just a sloppy, pathetic mess against the door and she was still gasping his name against the bite mark she'd left at his shoulder.

What the fuck had he done?

"We gotta go," he grunted, felt her teeth score his skin and her breath bathe him in shivers. "We gotta get out of here, Kate. I don't know who saw me, but I turned the cameras off and they'll notice. Fuck, they'll notice soon."

She stiffened and her legs dropped from around his waist, and he thought maybe some sobriety had been shocked back into her. But she swayed and dipped towards him.

"Kate? Love, come on. Gotta get out of here."

"Castle?" Her voice was keening even as she said his name, and her fingers were bruising his biceps, nails cutting him as she pressed her face hard into his neck. "Castle. Castle, don't leave."

He tangled his hand in her hair and pushed his forehead to hers, fighting back the intensity of his need for her, cycling up again like a beast. "We have to, Kate. We have to get out of here. There's a contract out on you, sweetheart, and I just fucking walked right back into this. I've put you in danger again."

She was shaking, and he felt like the worst asshole, fucking her against a door when she was drunk and bleeding and clearly not at all with it, but it had felt so damn good to have her, to push every terrible image out of her head and make her cry out his name, make her _believe_ in them again.

Castle gripped her harder and stepped away from the door, but she came after him, and he saw her eyes were squeezed tightly shut.

"Kate," he muttered. "You gotta get some clothes on. I gotta _find_ my clothes. Come on, love."

She lifted her head and stared at him, and damn it - damn it - he was going to rot in hell for this, for all of this, every idiotic, selfish decision he'd made since her apartment blew up.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, his throat closing up with it, fingers coasting up her neck.

"Don't go," she gasped, nails digging into him again.

"Find some clothes. We needed to be out of here an hour ago."

He tugged on his pants and boxers, got himself zipped and the belt buckled again, and she was still just staring at him. So he took her by the hand and led her to his closet, discovered it mostly empty but for the black dress and a pair of red lace underwear dropped on the floor. Had she worn red lace underwear to his memorial service? Shit. He was turned on again just standing there.

He was a sick fuck.

He pushed her back so he could kneel down; she was naked and bleeding and the shame was burning in him like fire. Her knees, her palms, even that one place at her wrist, slowly and steadily bleeding, and it was worrying him (but obviously not enough to keep him from taking her against the damn door). Still she put on her underwear and stepped into the dress as he guided it up her hips, zipped her in the back.

She was staring at him and he saw her lashes - heavy and exotic - slip closed before she fluttered them open again.

"This is real," she said suddenly.

"Kate," he sighed, gripping her by the back of the neck. "This is real and we _have_ to leave here."

"We have to," she echoed, blinking again, and then she groaned and lifted a hand to her head. "Castle."

"Yeah."

She swayed and pushed her hand to her mouth, eyes widening, and then she was jerking away from him and heading for the bathroom.

Fuck. No, the glass.

He caught her the second before she plowed back through all those broken pieces, but she retched, vomiting on the floor even as he held her. She sobbed and seemed to collapse, but he held her up with one arm, managed to gather her hair out of her face, hold it off her neck as he sank down in the doorway.

"It's okay," he murmured, putting her against his chest as she shivered and tears leaked from her eyes. "It's okay, baby. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. You're gonna be okay."

She breathed in and out against him, stuttered breaths as she seemed to zone in and out, and then she pushed off his chest, swallowing hard.

"I feel like shit," she rasped, the back of her hand over her mouth again. She closed her eyes and swayed for a long second, but she lowered her hand and slowly looked at him once more.

"I'm sorry," he offered helplessly.

"Where's your shirt?" she said, her voice toneless and dull.

"I'll find it," he said, untangling from her, standing them both up. "You have shoes?"

She nodded.

"Can you go get them?"

She walked away from him, still so flat, and he watched her a moment, but no - she was gathering her stuff, a little mindless, a little wooden. But she was better. He thought. Maybe.

So Castle ran back for his shirt and shrugged it on, the jacket as well. He picked the army jacket up off the floor and came to find her in the hallway, held it up for her. She turned and slid one arm in, then the other, and he laid it flat over her shoulders, couldn't help rubbing his thumb at the base of her neck, into her hair. When she looked at him again, she was crying, soft and quiet and inescapable.

"You're really here," she frowned, her voice breaking.

He wrapped his arms around her and held on.

* * *

While Kate sat on the bed, shivering and bowed over with her head in her hands, Castle popped open the hollow side of his closet and pulled out his go-pack. After Eastman had died, he'd confiscated the man's forged identities and reused them for himself - why let the good work go to waste? He knew Eastman would've wanted to help, just as he had so many times before.

He wrapped the ID packets in a tshirt and shoved it into a duffle bag, gathered as much of Beckett's stuff as he could find and added that as well. The credit cards and license he placed in his own wallet, tossing the official stuff into the hidden compartment in his closet. He found Beckett's keys and wallet and phone in the kitchen, and he did the same there - replacing her stuff with the new go-pack information, popping out her sim card and installing the clean one. He'd had her cover ID made after she was shot at the funeral; he'd been afraid they'd have to run sometime and he'd wanted it all ready to hand.

When it was safe for them again, he'd come back for her real stuff. She'd need it.

"Okay, Kate," he said quietly, coming back into the bedroom. She was slumped against the headboard, but her eyes were open and she shifted slowly forward. When she was standing, he wrapped his arm around her waist and kissed her temple. "I got what we need. You good?"

"Far from," she muttered. Her words weren't slurred, but her pupils were dilated and her hands trembled. He could feel her body threatening to give way.

"We're gonna hole up somewhere and figure this out. Okay? We'll figure it out." He guided her down the hallway and she wasn't weaving or anything, but she wasn't steady and he noticed her wrist was bleeding again. He snagged the kitchen towel from the floor and wrapped it around her wrist in a triage move, using rubber bands from the junk drawer to keep it in place.

Jeez, they weren't at all inconspicuous.

He didn't like it, but he walked outside with her and covered the three blocks back to his vehicle in broad daylight. There was just nothing to be done for it. She seemed to be less aware, less able to coordinate her movements as they got farther from his building, but when they finally reached his car, she climbed in without a problem.

The CIA cars all had GPS, but Castle dismantled the thing before they started out, threw the pieces in a dumpster. Since everyone had probably seen their awkward, slow stumble to the car, he definitely didn't want to make following them any easier.

When he glanced over at Kate, the kitchen towel he'd wrapped around her wrist seemed to be doing its job, the blood clotting, her arms up against her chest as she stared at him, fighting sleep, and her bare toes were curled up in the seat. She looked small like that, in a way he didn't like to see, but she was with him now, she was here.

He'd figure it out.

Castle maneuvered through traffic in the Bronx and aimed for Connecticut to avoid the toll roads and their cameras. Kate passed out, the car reeked of alcohol, and even though he wanted to get her somewhere safe, he had to be careful. The drive was monotnous and endless, the stop and start of late afternoon rush hour and then the deepening of twilight outside the car making him restless. He frequently exited the interstate and backtracked, parked in out of the way rest stops and watched the roads, stopped at gas stations but didn't buy anything.

He checked Kate's breathing and she seemed to be sleeping it off, her hair damp and plastered to her neck, her hands in fists against her chest. At one point, he realized she was clutching the chain with his wedding band, so he took it from her and slid the ring off, pushed it on over his finger where it belonged.

It took hours longer than it should have, but by the time he stopped at a bed and breakfast just past Stamford, he was certain that no one had followed.

Castle got out and checked his shirt in the reflective surface of his car window. He tucked his tails in, straightened his collar, skimmed his fingers down the buttons to be sure. When he went up the front porch and stepped inside, the woman behind the desk gave him a tired smile.

He handed over the credit card from his go-pack, had that trepidation in hist guts that always came anytime he used a fresh ID, but it went through without a problem. The woman handed him a bunch of stuff to sign and asked after his companion - _asleep in the car, long drive_ - and then he had a key.

They could rest.

* * *

The room was narrow and sparsely furnished, and Castle let out a short breath and shut the door with his heel. Kate was heavy with unconsciousness, but he laid her on the bed and stroked the hair back from her face.

Let her sleep it off.

He unwound the rubber bands from the dish towel, but the blood had dried and was sticking to the material, so he had to wet a washcloth in the bathroom down the hall and then soak the kitchen towel until it loosened.

The bleeding had stopped at least. And he'd been right the first time - the wound was shallow. He washed her other cuts and the abrasions on her hands, realized she still had glass in them as well. And her knees. He had to throw on the overhead light but still his fingers were too fat to get everything alone.

Castle went back down to the common bathroom, rooted through the cabinets until he found tweezers and hydrogen peroxide in a first aid kit. He doused the tweezers liberally in the solution, took those as well as a couple of paper towels and a package of sterile gauze back with him to the room. She was still unconscious in the bed, for which he was grateful, and so he kneeled down at her side and started on the puffy skin of her hands.

The wine glass had apparently splintered. A thousand tiny slivers irritating the sensitive pads of Kate's palms. His heart clenched with each one, but he ignored the panicky sick feeling that kept asking _did she mean to do this?_ and instead concentrated on patching her up.

He washed her hands again with the washcloth, gently massaging the skin to be sure the glass was gone, and then he pressed moist gauze over the area, doused it with the hydrogen peroxide.

For the next part, Castle sat on the bed and draped her legs over his lap to see better. He picked the glass out carefully, had to blot at her knees with the washcloth as the blood ran again. It took an hour until he was finally satisfied, and he layered damp gauze over the cuts as well, skimmed his fingers down her calves and stretched her out in bed once more.

Castle cleaned up all the supplies, put everything back where it belonged, disposed of the bloodied washcloth to avoid any questions. He ran water into a glass and brought it back to the room, set it on the bedside table, and then he locked the door behind them, shutting them up safely inside.

Kate was unconscious on her back, so he slipped into bed beside her and carefully eased her onto her side, in case she got sick again. He curled his arm at her sternum and brought her back against his chest, framed her body with his, finally let himself blow out a long breath.

Her hair caught in his mouth but he petted it down, pressed his lips to that spot behind her ear. He couldn't possibly sleep, not after this, but he could keep watch over hers. He could do that at least.

* * *

It was the throbbing ache of brutal reality that woke her; grief had set up a drum beat in her head and she groaned with the sensation of her own blood pounding in her heart. Too much wine. No - vodka, wasn't it?

But then it was the warmth and the scent that dragged her out from under the heavy lid of her grief. Coffee and winter woods, a heat that melted every knot in her body and held her up.

Her hands clenched and then ached because of it, but she struggled in the grip of too-strong arms and turned her head and it was him.

It really was him.

She swallowed against the dry feeling in her mouth, unfurled her fingers against his cheek. He was watching her intently and she realized she'd - what had she done to make him look like that?

"Rick," she breathed out, scratching her nails against the scruff and shivering at how real, how good the sensation felt. Her head was pounding agony, but it meant - it meant it was real.

"I'm so sorry," he gruffed, closing his eyes and brushing his lips over her fingers. Her hands ached, fiercely, and she turned her palm to look.

"Oh, the glass," she sighed, flexing her hand experimentally. "Ouch."

He huffed and his forehead dropped down to hers, a little laugh that sounded more hysterical than truly amused. All real. Real sounds. She'd never hallucinate something so broken, would she? She was the broken one, not him.

She feathered her fingers through the hair at his temple, rejoiced at the touch of his lips at her neck, something heavy and dark breaking open in her chest.

"You were - you weren't here," she murmured, unable to say the word _dead_, unable to put that reality back into form, to recreate it at all - because just let this be a never ending dream if it was a dream.

"I'm sorry," he murmured again. His fingers stroked her hair back and her mouth tasted funny, her stomach like it was leaden, her head too heavy for her neck.

"How did you live?" she asked finally, bracing herself for a cold plunge back into reality.

"I spotted the bomb in your oven moments before it went. Dove in your bathtub."

Her hand shook as she pressed it against his neck, felt the regular and fast pulse of his blood. "In the bathtub."

"I'm so sorry, Kate." He nuzzled into her hand and there was the scrape of his stubble again, reminding her of what was true. "I knew it was a bad idea, but it seemed the only way to keep you safe."

"By leaving me?" she cried, withdrew her hand and pressed it over her eyes.

"I'm so sorry," he was murmuring and his body seemed to encompass hers, everywhere at once. "I'm sorry, Kate. I didn't want to, I hated every - but I made a deal with my father to protect you while I went after Bracken. And, God help me, I'm sorry, but it's not worth it, getting Bracken's not - he's not worth watching you fall apart and doing nothing - doing _nothing_."

Kate felt the sob catch in her chest, part furious and part pathetically grateful, but she growled and held it back. She had to get control of this, had to force out the hangover - fuck, she was desperately hungover - and make sense of this. Had to make sense of this.

He was alive.

"I saw your bones," she gritted out. "Bones."

"Black set it up. I left the ring there so you wouldn't have to ID the body-"

She scrabbled at her neck and the chain scraped her skin, but it was gone. It wasn't here; she'd lost-

"I have it, Kate. I got it. You kept it for me, but I don't want you carrying it too, love. You shouldn't have to carry it."

Her fingers released on the chain and she studied the wedding band now back where it belonged, lifted her hand to it and stroked the warm metal. Warm from him. He was here.

"Kate, I have to know. I have to ask. Did you - did you mean to do this?"

"Get black out drunk? Hell yes," she grit out, closing her eyes once more. "I gave myself one night, one night to let it be - I can't believe you. I can't believe what you did to me. You left me. After we said - after we said it was so much worse when we split up."

"I meant - Kate. Kate, did you mean to - hurt yourself?"

She wanted to kick him out of the bed; she wanted to _hurt him_. She wanted to cry. She wanted to cling to him and sob everything out and then for it to all go back to what it was and not remember the way the ash got in her lungs and the ring spinning empty and forlorn on its chain and the dark severity of his apartment, the lack of his things, lack of him.

"Kate, the glass. In the bathtub and you - you drowned?"

She stared at him. "No? I don't - did I mean to break the glass? I got drunk, Castle, and fuck, I don't remember - I don't even care - how can you even judge me on that? You left me." She smacked his shoulder as she said, felt better and worse at the same time. "You let me think you were dead, you bastard. You have always been a bully and if I weren't so fucking grateful you're alive, I'd hit you harder. I'd do you serious damage."

And even though she was seething, even though she hated him so much her head hurt, she realized she was also clutching his shoulders and back and holding him to her, now speaking into his neck even as she skimmed her lips along his skin. She was at war with herself.

"Are you laughing?" she muttered.

He gasped. "No. Yes. I'm sorry. I love you. I love you, Kate, and I know that doesn't make up for it, but I was - you just don't give up, do you? You never give up, and please just don't give up on me either."

"_You_ gave up," she said back. "You quit-"

"No," he insisted, and his hand flexed against hers and pushed to her face, holding her tightly. "No. I had to - I hate this job and what it does to us, Kate. And I'm so sorry. I'm sorry, just - just please let me make it right. I was trying to do the right thing."

Her body was a flame and he was so heavy and real over her; she wanted to light them both on fire, have them go up in smoke and ash and burn everything to dust.

"I cried for you," she muttered, felt her cheeks flush with the inadvertent confession. "I hate you for that. I _hate_ you."

"But the good kind, right? The kind where I get to make it up to you all night?" he whispered back, his mouth at her collarbone and his kiss nudging the line of her black dress to one side. She felt his hand at the inside of her knee, gentle and smooth, and his fingers trailed upwards, shifting her dress.

"Make it up to me for weeks," she whispered back, hating even more the break in her voice. "And we'll see."

"Weeks. Months. The rest of my life, Kate Beckett."

"Better be a damn long life, Rick. Or it means nothing. A _long_ life."

"I promise," he murmured into her mouth. And even though he couldn't possibly, she took it as a vow and helped him draw the dress up over her head.

* * *

"I need some clothes," she said suddenly.

Castle shifted and loosened his arms even though he didn't want to, and she rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling.

"Clothes," he sighed. "I like you without."

She huffed a little at him and her hand came up between their bodies, fingers wriggling, and even though he knew that wasn't what she meant, _hold my hand,_ he took it anyway and squeezed, careful of the scrapes.

There was so much he should explain, so much they had to clear up between them. They were in a time crunch here too, with the price on her head and the elimination assignment falling into place. The CIA would be looking for them and they'd be found, eventually; he'd bought them maybe 48 hours at the most.

But he wasn't entirely sure that explaining everything while Kate was hungover was such a great idea. She still seemed unable to believe he was here, and alive, and he didn't fault her for that. But it made him restless, knowing all the things they should be doing.

"Clothes," she repeated. "I don't want to wear that dress again."

He brought the back of her hand to his lips on a sigh and turned over to lie against her, their joined grasp caught between their bodies. She lifted her knee to his hip and used her other hand to paint his lips with her fingers.

"I brought what I found in the apartment," he said softly.

She shook her head. "Didn't fit that well. I just grabbed the first things on the rack."

He sighed and untangled their fingers so he could prop his head up on his hand. "I'll go out and get you-"

"No. We'll go together," she interrupted, clutching at his neck.

"Kate, you don't have anything to wear."

"I'll-" She stopped and swallowed hard. "The ones that don't fit. I'll just - wear those. I don't care. I'm not letting you out of my sight."

"I"m sorry-"

"Stop being sorry," she growled, lifting up suddenly and flipping him onto his back. "Just be - real. Just be here, and not a lie. I can't. . ."

He apologized with his mouth instead, with his fingers and his touch and his body, giving her himself even though her furious and insistent need frightened him with its depth, its darkness. He'd broken her, in some way he hadn't yet found a way to heal, and he wasn't sure how to get her back, how to make it right.

She allowed the kiss, bit him back for it. He hissed into the scratch of her nails down his arms, and then he pushed her over and took her again, made her know, made her believe with the force of his love.

* * *

She sat on his chest, laughing at him, and he was just - so damn grateful she was laughing at all that he couldn't even care that it was at him. Still he untangled his fingers from the empty chain around her neck and finally tugged it up and over her head. Her hair snarled in it and she laughed again, worked it free herself. He watched the way her body moved and then she laid back down at his side, dropping the chain over the side of the bed.

She caught his hand up against her chest and kissed his fingers, began playing with the ring, pushing it around and around on his finger. He let her touch, her body restless and shifting against his, her knees pushing between his, her sigh still catching somewhere in her lungs.

"Kate, you're still my wife," he said, and he wasn't trying to make it into a question, but he thought maybe the question was there.

She curled her left hand around his left hand, the metal of their rings hitting together, and she nodded into the grey-lit darkness of the room.

"I want to get a license," he said then. "Make it official here."

She lifted her head and gave him a look he didn't understand.

"I thought you had to get - permission," she said.

"I'll get it."

"Under what name?"

"My name," he said fiercely. He didn't even care. Let them all know-

"Is that safe?" she said.

He grunted and squeezed her hand reflexively, had to let go when she winced and her fingers fluttered. The scrapes were raw, he knew that; he knew that. Pay attention, Castle.

"I don't know that it's safe for you, but as - as a Rodgers," he said finally. "Richard Rodgers marries Kate Beckett. The name I used to get the dog."

"Is it safe for you?" she said quickly, drawing his hand closer to her, her head coming to rest on the pillow beside his. She'd never been one to hover, to cling, and the lack of space between them now was disconcerting.

"Why wouldn't it be safe for me?"

"Don't they all know that Kate Beckett is attached to a spy?" she murmured. "And if you use that name, Rodgers, then how will that cover keep you safe after that? We're using it right now, aren't we? And it'll be blown the moment anyone looks up the marriage license in the public record."

He nodded painfully, saw the damn logic in it too. "But marrying the spy-"

"I've already married you," she said suddenly. "I don't care who you are - son of a spy or son of an actress-"

"Son of a bitch?" he inserted quietly, and he meant it seriously. All he'd done to her. But she laughed, almost a giggle, her forehead coming to rest against his collarbone.

"Don't call Martha that," she murmured.

He laughed back, a relieved thing that was more sigh than amusement, and he realized his hand was pressed between them, his fingertips right at her neck. He stroked her skin and leaned down to kiss where he could reach, tracing the line of her temple to her cheek and then to her jaw as she lifted up to him.

"This is the only real thing in my life," he murmured. "And I'll get a marriage license and make it official, Kate. You deserve that. You deserve everything."

"He wouldn't let me go to your CIA funeral," she said quietly. "Are we not official to the CIA?"

His hand tightened in hers, his body stiffened. "What?"

"Your father. He wouldn't tell me where - when it was, the CIA service. I just wanted - I don't want to be the lie, Rick."

"You're not a lie," he rushed out. "I swear. You're not a lie."

"Then why - did you not think I could do it? I went with you all over Europe; you saw me put on an act for the crowd. Why did I have to be in the dark for so long? Why couldn't you tell me that you were really alive?"

He groaned and drew his arm around her, pressed his mouth to her hair. She said she didn't want another apology from him, but he was running out of ways to explain. "I didn't have a choice, Kate. The contract is out on our lives - the bomb had just shown me how far he'd go. And Black showed up to deal with the aftermath and I didn't - it was either stick with his plan and play dead, or he'd pull all our security. Without the CIA watching our backs, Kate, we'd have been dead. You'd have been dead."

"So you died instead. And I - I had to suffer."

"No. No, I - it wasn't supposed to. . ." He trailed off into nothing, but she was still so pliant against him, so warm and giving and soft. He'd expected fury, and he didn't know how to react to the pleading, quiet desperation. The confusion.

"Why did you make me part of the lie?"

No. No - surely he hadn't? Surely that wasn't it.

Castle hitched in his breath and blinked back the urge to cry, drew her tighter into his chest. "I didn't mean to. I didn't have time to think. It was either stick to the plan or see you in the crosshairs, and Kate. . ."

"Stick to the plan," she echoed dully. "Yeah, you're good at that. He's always had a plan for you. And it's not me."

She withdrew from him, slid out of bed and reached down for his shirt. He watched her shrug it on in silence, buttoning every last button, and then she was heading for the door.

"Kate," he grit out, panic making him sit up straight.

"I have to go to the bathroom."

And then she left.


	8. Chapter 8

**Close Encounters 6**

* * *

Kate sank to the edge of the bathtub and buried her head in her hands, took slow breaths. She was wearing his shirt, she was making love to him like he'd disappear at any moment, and yet-

He'd left her. He'd lied - or neglected to let her in on the whole truth - and hadn't that always been their issue? How he handled her, how he fed her information according to some arbitrary timetable in his own head, how he bullied to get his own way.

Wasn't anything new, was it, Beckett? So did she keep punishing him for it when she already knew he was like this? She'd gone into this relationship with her eyes wide open. She knew him, knew his job and the secrets, knew what he was like, how his love twisted into a need to protect, to _control_, and if she couldn't handle it, then. . .

Then she should've walked away a long time ago.

After he'd been stabbed, she'd been running on guilt and desperation, giving in to his way of doing things because - because he'd been stabbed for her. Her fault. And then she was shot and he was right most of the time about how she was pushing herself, and she'd given in to it - his handling, his bullying.

But now she was whole, he was his own man, and they had to find their balance. She had to reassert control over her own life. She couldn't go through something like this again; she couldn't be emotionally manipulated just for his father's _plan_. He'd panicked, really. Hadn't he? The bomb had gone off and he'd feared for her life, their life together, and he'd done exactly what his father wanted him to do.

She knew that feeling too - knew how Black could dominate and manipulate.

But no more of that. Time to break those chains.

When this - whatever this was - was over, she was going to insist he sit down and have a conversation with his mother, dig into those old wounds, start getting some real answers. It would help, she thought; it would give him explanations for his little boy hurts and a way to move past them.

She felt better just for having the plan, for having the resolve to do something proactive about the tangled knot of _them._

Kate stood up and ran water in the sink, splashed it over her face. She glanced at herself in the mirror and winced. She needed a shower; she was starving; she looked wretched.

She scrubbed her face and ran her fingers through her hair, sighed to herself. Shower later. She needed clothes and toiletries; they should think of a plan.

They.

Them.

He was alive.

Kate pushed out of the bathroom and hurried back down the hallway, tripping over the threshold and coming back to the bed-

and he looked so miserable sitting there.

"Oh, Rick," she sighed. She went to him and caught the side of his face with her fingers and pulled his head against her stomach, cradled him there. He took in a gulping breath and wrapped his arms around her waist. "Rick. I still love you. I'm not going anywhere. You have me, love. You have me."

* * *

She carded her fingers through his hair until he seemed to ease, and then she gripped his ear and gently tugged him away. "Let's hit up the shopping center down the street. I need clothes and shampoo and stuff."

He nodded, and his eyes were hesitant, so she bent over him and kissed him softly, all the ways she'd missed him, all the relief at having him welling up.

When she lifted, he rose to his feet and chased her, cupping her cheeks and brushing his mouth against hers, tracing the outline of her lips before sliding his tongue inside. Tender, touching her like she was everything, all of it, and she circled her hands at his wrists and hung on.

"You're naked," she murmured, laughing a little even as she stroked her hands down his sides. His flesh shivered at her touch and she pressed the back of her fingers to his abs, feeling the flex and tension of his muscles. "I like it when you're naked."

"Kate," he panted. "I promise. Won't - won't ever do that again. Just. . ."

"What do you want, Castle?"

He closed his mouth and his throat worked, his head tilting back as if he was trying to get control of himself. She _had_ missed him, she'd needed him and ached for him, and every time she felt so sick, so bleak and anguished, she'd had the wild, desperate thought that if she could just _talk_ to him, she'd be okay again. But of course, she couldn't - she couldn't - he was dead-

Had been. He wasn't dead; he was here. And the heat of his thighs was scalding her, the clutch of his hands at her jaw and neck made her want to push him back down on the bed and remind herself how present he was, how strong and alive.

"Clothes," he ground out, his eyes flashing open and staring down at her. Wow. So blue.

"What?"

"I need clothes. And you need clothes. And a shower. And - and I'm not doing this again until you've had a chance to really sleep."

"You withholding sexual favors from me, Castle?"

He gulped and suddenly crushed her into a tight embrace; she felt the erratic and mad beat of his heart against her. "I'm trying to be a better man than I am, Kate. Better than this."

"I like this," she whispered, but she knew that wasn't entirely true either. She didn't like this, didn't like being kept in the dark or worrying about what he might do next. "Actually."

"Yeah?"

"I don't. I want you to talk to your mother when we get finished with this."

He choked on something she thought was a laugh and Kate finally let him go, turned around to find his pants on the floor. She handed them over, regarding him carefully.

"I'm serious."

"Well, that definitely killed the mood. Thanks, Beckett. One way to do it."

She pushed on his shoulder, felt the tug of her scraped hands and curled her fingers back into a loose fist. "You need to talk with her, Castle. You have - we have issues. Both of us. Because of what happened with our moms. I'm trying to deal with mine; the least you can do is try to deal with yours."

He growled and shoved a foot into his pants. "I don't see how Martha has anything to do with us."

"You let your father blindside you and lead you around like you're still that little boy, Rick. . .And you hurt me."

His head snapped up to hers, a grief-crushed look on his face. "Kate."

She didn't like putting it out there quite so baldly, but there it was. "I know it's going to happen. Two people. . .bound to hurt each other. I know I've hurt you. But there was no reason you couldn't have told me. Except your father got in your head and twisted everything. You've spent long enough warning _me_ about him, Castle."

"I know," he gritted out, shaking his head and pinching the bridge of his nose. He sighed and buttoned his jeans slowly, put his hands on his hips. "How does - talking to Martha won't suddenly make me. . ."

"Knowing. Just knowing why," she insisted, drawing his shirt from the chair and holding it out for him. "Knowing the reasons, whatever they are, can only help."

"I don't need the reasons."

"You act like your father has been the only person to ever want you. But you don't know the whole story yet. You haven't given her a chance. And if Black is your measuring stick for how love is supposed to work. . .Castle, then. . ."

She trailed off, no words left.

"He's not." Castle said suddenly. "I know that much."

"Then stop treating me like he treats you."

His jaw dropped.

She took a deep breath and began buttoning his shirt, giving him a moment to come back from that, keeping her fingers on him and trying to soothe that statement with her presence.

"I'm not leaving you. I'm not going to keep you for a few years and then abandon you to your father. But you have to work on this, Castle. You have to stop doling out information as you see fit, keeping me in the dark, protecting me by not telling me the whole truth."

"I'm sorry," he whispered.

"I said enough with being sorry. It's not about sorry. And I know I have problems letting go, and wanting to be in control, and obsessing to the point of darkness. So it's not all your fault. I get sucked down a rabbit hole, Rick, and you're just trying to keep that from happening. I see that. But we work better together. As partners."

He nodded and his fingers came to cover hers over his last button. He brought her palms in for a kiss to each scrape, clasped them over his heart. "I know. Partners. I learned that lesson, I really did. But I panicked when it came to risking your life."

"We risk it together."

"I don't like it-"

"You think I like it any better that it's your life at risk too?"

"No," he sighed.

"No. And now you see why. I don't - I don't do things by halves, Castle. I've never been able to hold myself back when it comes to. . .to this. It's not just going all in, not just diving into the deep end and hoping I swim, but it's consuming. All consuming."

"I saw," he murmured and reached out to cup her cheek. She came when he tugged, let herself be pulled right up against him, a shivery breath escaping her. "Kate, I never want to see you like that again. I work on me, on being a damn bully, but you gotta - you have to find something to hold your head above water."

"I know," she whispered, closing her eyes tightly. She wasn't proud of the wreck she'd been in, though it hadn't entirely been purposeful. It had just. . .she had just. . . "It hurt."

"I'm sor-" He cut himself off and pressed his lips to her temple, a breath in and then out against her hair. "I can't be the thing that holds you up, Kate. Not the only thing. Because when I finally don't come back-"

"You came back."

"But you know it's not a promise I can make," he murmured.

She clutched him tighter, realized she was at an unfair disadvantage in just the tshirt, no underwear, while he had his clothes on. "After these past few days, believe me. I know you can't promise to always come back to me."

"But I'll always love you, Kate. I'll always want you. Need you. Find you amazing and breathtaking and strong and intelligent and resourceful and beautiful and-"

"Castle," she laughed a little, sliding her arms around his waist. His shirt felt warm and soft at her cheek. "I can hold on to that."

"Even if I don't make it-"

"You'll make it."

"Even so."

"I'll hold on to that," she said quietly. He was right. She'd only find herself right back on the kitchen floor, blackout drunk and bleeding, unable to even take care of a dog, if she didn't get a grip on her addictive tendencies. Stop building her very _self_ around these things and instead use them as fuel.

He loosened his arms and drew back with a soft, proud grin. "I love you, Kate. I love how you never give up. You just keep going. I want you to never give up. Even so."

But she squeezed him tighter and said the thing that still haunted her, let it come right out. "It was because it was my fault," she whispered. "Because you - my mother's case started all of this and you were gone because of _me._"

He stared at her for a long, terrible moment, and then he caught her back up into his arms in a crushing embrace.

And he said nothing.

Because they both knew there was nothing to say to that.

* * *

Sometimes she didn't take care of herself the way she should, the way she ought to. It was like she was always trying to prove something or she was trying to not be a disappointment. And so while he really was going to keep his mouth shut about it, not bully her, he did think that being her partner in this meant saying no.

No.

He wasn't ignoring all self-restraint and human decency to have her again when she'd been blind drunk and bleeding just hours ago. But damn, she was really brutally honest about. . .when he'd ripped her heart out.

Hadn't he?

He'd ripped her heart out.

But he didn't think grief could be like that. Heart broken, yes, oh yes. He'd be - yes. Heart broken, lost. Grief couldn't be measured or arranged or even limited. But not. . .it couldn't eviscerate her. She couldn't be - not when she knew what kind of work he did and the work she did as well, and having her own mother-

She couldn't be gutted out by their love. That wasn't okay. That wasn't healthy. And if their relationship could do that to her, then what did it say about him as her partner, her lover, her husband?

He was doing a fucking poor job of it, that's what it said.

So when she twined her fingers through his and led him through the racks of clothes at the Wal-Mart down the street from their bed and breakfast, he blurted it out pretty poorly. Because it was killing him.

"I don't want to be bad for you, Kate."

She stumbled to a stop at a display of slinky looking tops, all metallic and shimmery, and he was distracted for a moment with the sudden image of Beckett dancing in one of those coppery shirts, the way her body-

"You're not bad for me."

He jerked his eyes up to hers and struggled back to his train of thought. "I want to make you laugh."

"I laugh."

"Are you happy?" he asked, squeezing his fingers in hers.

She came at him, wrapping her body around his and kissing him breathless. He panted against her cheek as she stood there in her damn funeral dress and heels, her fingers running through his hair, her words so low and murmured he could barely hear them.

"Rick, you have opened me up and poured so much. . .life into me. You don't even know. How bad it was before you. How dark and narrow and mean my life was. Until you. I only hope I do half as much for you."

His chest broke apart, his whole body stripped and rebuilt stronger just with those words. He curled his fingers at her neck and stroked his thumb at her jaw, kissed her in the middle of Wal-Mart under the blue-tinted florescent lights because she was so beautiful she made him ache.

Everything was at rest inside him. For the first time ever, the constant and endless maelstrom of his psyche was quiet.

"You make everything go still," he sighed into her mouth. "You give me peace."

* * *

In the car once more, she used the pre-paid phone they'd bought inside Wal-Mart to call Ryan. He sounded frantic when he answered.

"Beckett, where are you? We can't-"

"I'm in - safe. I'm safe. I can't say; I shouldn't say, Ryan. But-"

"Beckett. This is-"

"I know," she interrupted, turned to look at Castle as he waited at a stop light. "But I can't. Not right now. Ryan, where are we on the - confetti?"

"The conf. . .oh. Still with Espo's guy."

She nodded to Castle in confirmation and he gestured for her to go ahead.

"It's important that absolutely no one knows we have that. I need you to baby-sit that thing like. . .like it's me."

"Beckett. Are you even. . .are you sure you're. . ."

"I know," she said quietly. "But I'm - it's different now. You and Espo need to do this for me. I'm trying to stay out of sight until we get somewhere on Bracken."

"All right. Okay. Just - check in with us. Every day."

"I can do that," she promised, taking a deep breath and feeling her head swim. She pressed her hand to her eyes and swallowed through the rush of nausea. "I'll call at this time tomorrow."

She heard him let out a long breath. "We'll see what comes of the confetti. Let you know, boss."

Kate felt the car surge forward and then turn; she opened her eyes to see Castle pulling into a sandwich place. Her stomach growled angrily and she felt his hand come up to catch in her hair, his thumb at her jaw as if in a kiss. He let go to park the car in the lot, and she watched him absent-mindedly as he took off his seatbelt.

"Ryan, I gotta go. But tomorrow."

"Until tomorrow," he said, and her heart caught at the despondency in his voice.

"I promise you," she said fiercely. "It's going to be okay, Ry. I'll call you."

Maybe it was using the nickname that Castle had given him, maybe it was the certainty in her voice, but she heard his sharp, indrawn breath and she realized he knew.

He knew.

"Yes," she answered slowly. "But."

"Oh my God."

"Ry."

"Right. Right, no. I know. Yes. Okay, tomorrow."

"If you tell Javi. . .find someplace crowded, lots of people, ambient noise. Got me?"

"Got you, boss. Got you. Be safe."

And he hung up. She turned to Castle with a grimace, an apology on her tongue, but he shook his head and leaned it to catch her mouth in a fierce kiss. Her hand clenched around the phone and she pushed up into him, that wild and abandoned part of her struggling for more, for forever, for him.

He gentled her and put her away with his palms at her ears and his fingers in the tangled mess of her hair. She was wearing the dark-wash jeans and white tshirt they'd bought in Wal-Mart; she'd just changed in the dressing room and brought the tags up to the register with the other stuff.

His hand dropped down to the v-neck of her shirt and skimmed the pads of his fingers against the line of material and skin. Her heart tripped and she struggled to catch her breath.

"Ryan knows."

"They're detectives. Should've seen it coming."

"Kiss me again," she whispered, needing it more than food or air or anything.

He pressed in softly this time, little kisses again and again, coming back for more, lips meeting and brushing and glancing, and her blood pushing through her veins until she wanted to crawl over the console and press her body against his.

And then her stomach growled nastily and ruined it.

Castle laughed and combed his fingers in her hair, pushed it away from her face. "Food, Kate. You need to eat."

* * *

They had a back booth and the chill from the window seeped in and settled in her bones. She hunched into the cheap sweatshirt jacket and took another bite of her sandwich; she was practically finished and they'd just sat down.

Castle's knee nudged hers and she looked up at him. "You cold?"

She nodded and he was pushing his drink and meatball sub over to her side of the booth and then coming around. She scooted over and eyed him, but she had to admit that his solid bulk next to her began to thaw her bones.

"Look at you eating a meatball sub like the rest of us yahoos," she laughed, nudging his side.

"Just trying to keep my survival on the down low," he grinned back. "When in. . .Connecticut, eat meatball subs."

"Speaking of Rome," she murmured with a grin. "You know that's good enough for me, right? I don't need-"

"I want to file the paperwork," he insisted once more. "Don't take that from me, Kate."

She couldn't help the way that settled in her, made her stupidly happy even though she didn't need it. She didn't _have_ to be married to him in the state of New York to know what they meant to each other. But it was - a new life. It was starting a new life with him and the paperwork was just the first part of things.

Kate took another bite of her sandwich and felt the cold climb up her spine again.

"Get closer, Beckett. You're shivering."

She chewed slowly and couldn't resist wedging her body tighter against his. Castle dropped his palm to her knee and the heat of his hand burned straight through.

"That helps," she said slowly.

He wriggled his fingers on her knee and she cast him a sly look, saw him grinning beside her. He was beside her. She was sitting next to him again, feeling his warm skin through his shirt, his hand on her and teasing a line up her thigh. She had him back, and she'd thought it was impossible.

She dropped her sandwich and just stared at him a moment, at the line of his jaw and the work of his muscles, the way the hair dusted across his forearms and the flop of bangs in his eyes where it had grown out again.

"You're staring, Beckett."

"You're resurrected, Castle."

He startled and turned back to her, mouth open, sandwich hanging. Regret shimmered in his eyes and she winced. If he said, _I'm sorry_, one more time, she might hit him.

So instead she leaned in and kissed the soft side of his cheek, dragged her lips to the corner of his mouth before sitting back.

"After this," she started and waited until he caught up with her. "We need to come up with a plan. With the contract out on us. . .it changes things."

He nodded slowly. "And I need to fill you in. It might change things as well."

She studied him a moment, the shame tight in his mouth and the way he was avoiding her eyes. "What do you mean?"

"We had a plan. It's set to go into motion later today. With or without me, at this point. They'll get someone else in there if I don't show up."

"A plan," she repeated. "You. . .what are you doing, Castle?"

He pointedly didn't look at her, his sandwich dangling from his fingers. "Eat first. I'll tell you everything, but not here."

That did not sound good.


	9. Chapter 9

** Close Encounters 6**

* * *

Castle knew he owed her. He'd made the wrong decision when he'd agreed to his father's plan and she'd paid the price for his mistake. He'd hurt her.

Shit, that was the understatement of the year.

He'd gutted her open. And while she needed to know what it was for, what it was culminating to, he also wanted to know what to _do_. With his father's motivations not being entirely above board for this assignment, Castle wasn't certain any more that eliminating Bracken was the right thing. Black's machinations were legendary, and Castle didn't like playing into his hand, but he couldn't see any other option.

Bracken had to die.

So he took Seaside Avenue south to Cove Island Park, parked the Range Rover in the lot with a few others, and got out. The salt and the Connecticut wind were a brutal combination against his already stinging eyes, and Kate shivered as she came to his side.

"Let's walk down to the pavilion," he said quietly, taking her by the hand.

She was quiet as they skirted the water's edge, the trees lacy with new green shoots, a dappling of pink against the gray clouds. The sun broke open the sky and limned her cheeks and chin with white, but she was stiff with foreboding and this was too serious to enjoy the moment.

The cove rounded into sandy lines of straggling grass, and Castle pulled her under the wide picnic structure, sat her down at a bench and put his back to the table so that he could see out over the water. She settled in close - at least she was close - and he skimmed his fingers inside the sweatshirt jacket, found the warmth of her far hip and couldn't help tunneling up to touch skin.

She shivered and brought her hand over his, drew his arm tighter around her waist until their joined fingers rested over her stomach. He nudged his thumb under her shirt and stroked around her belly button.

Side by side, not having to look at the resolution in her eyes, the black and white way she saw the world. . .he could do this.

He could admit to what they were doing.

"I'm going to kill Bracken."

She sucked in a breath and went still.

He rushed to fill the emptiness. "I know you said - I know. But he planted a bomb in your apartment, and if I hadn't gotten home early, Kate. If I hadn't been there, you'd have died."

"You don't know that."

"Your oven has those manual dials. I did them wrong. I turned them wrong. I went for the temperature first, forgot to push the other dial to bake. Saved my life. I opened the oven door because it wasn't working-"

"I remember," she whispered.

Right. He'd been on the phone with her. "I saw it then."

"The tub," she said, jumping ahead in the story. Maybe she didn't want to hear it, didn't want to picture it.

"The tub," he repeated. "Black came and locked down the scene, coordinated the fire department. We had seconds to decide how to play it. I think when he heard about the bomb, he already knew how he wanted it to go. He had everything in place in moments. Body from the forensic farm - a bomb victim-"

"I thought it was you," she rasped.

He clutched her hand tighter, tried not to apologize again. "You were supposed to think that."

"I looked at those bones and-"

"You what?" She wasn't supposed to - that was why he'd- "I left the ring. So you wouldn't - Kate, you weren't supposed to ID the body. I didn't want you to-"

"You think I could leave it at that? Not see it with my own eyes? Not ever know?"

He swallowed hard and hung his head, struggled to breathe through the vivid image of her on his kitchen floor, broken and bleeding, because she'd seen those bones, that scrap of burnt tissue and the black husk of a body. Not even a body, just pieces.

"Kate," he groaned.

"So you - planned it. You played dead because. . .why?"

"I had hoped that with me out of the way, Bracken would leave you alone. And if you were - mourning - then it would be, you would be - I don't know. I thought it would keep the attention off of you. And with me dead, I'd have a certain freedom of movement."

The tree branches along the water's edge were stark, as if the wind had stripped whatever new growth made the attempt. He waited for Beckett to find her voice, kept his hand at her stomach, her body close to his side. If he could somehow keep her here. . .

Her voice rasped when it came. "Freedom. To murder Bracken."

He gritted his teeth. "Yes." His father had seen the opportunities immediately. "And I think - also? Freedom from prosecution. My father intended for me to stay dead, I believe. In this incarnation. I'd no longer be Richard Castle, no longer be able to approach you. I don't think he ever intended to let me come back to you."

"He wants us kept apart. He thinks I'm a liability to you. He'll do anything-"

"I see that now," he admitted. "I didn't - yes. I was - that was the wrong choice to make. To let him. . ."

"Let's move on, Castle."

But he lifted his head, glanced over at her. "I need to say this, Kate. And have you hear me."

She turned slowly to him, her eyes so vividly green in the March light. She looked like she was bracing herself. Against him, against what he might say.

"I want us." And when that didn't make sense, didn't sound even close to what he meant, he tried again. "What I did. . .the choice I made. . .I thought I was doing it for us. Black was going to pull his support; we'd have no protection to combat four million dollars worth of determination. I did what I had to do, Kate, and while - while it breaks me to see what I did to you, I can't-"

"Stop."

"It's not an apology," he ground out, not letting himself avoid her eyes. "It's just the truth. Because I'm not sorry for making that choice. I think - I still think our only option is killing the senator and ending his reign over your life, Kate."

She stared at him and then she untangled her fingers from his and stood up, stalking away from him.

There it was. The impasse.

She wanted a noble end to her quest, to this thing she'd built to epic proportions in her head, through her whole adult life, and he wanted only to cut it off at the source, end it.

But he was afraid she was too entwined with the story she'd told herself; he was afraid that killing the beast would kill her as well.

* * *

She walked until she couldn't feel her fingers, until the wind had ruined her hair and scraped her cheeks, and then she walked farther.

Was she seriously considering it?

God help her, she was.

Tantalizing and just within her reach. She didn't even have to do anything, she didn't have to actively participate, only sit back and let it happen.

Let her boyfriend kill the man who'd murdered her mother.

_Husband._

Partner.

Father of her children?

She closed her eyes and stopped, heard the whistling echo of birds and the moan of the wind. The water pushed against the rocky shoreline, curled in at the sand and made tide pools.

She didn't even know when - but it was a when now, where it had only been a fantastic and unrealistic dream before. It was an option, or it seemed like an option, having a family with him, and she could never - the father of her children couldn't murder a US senator.

What he'd done in his job, what he'd done to save her life in Copenhagen, what he'd done in service to his country's security - she could understand and respect him for. But not if he murdered Bracken. Not for her.

She took a deep breath of the clean salt air and turned back around.

He was still sitting at the bench in the pavilion, his eyes no doubt tracking her, his hands clasped together between his knees as he bent forward.

She loved him. And he wasn't killing a man for her.

* * *

He stood as she came closer, realized with some sense of pleased surprise that his anxiety had never been over whether or not she'd eventually make her way back. Only over her decision.

And he could tell by her face he wasn't going to agree.

"No."

He sighed and crossed his arms over his chest, watched her as she did the same, leaning back against a wooden support post. She raised an eyebrow as if in invitation and he geared up to defend his position.

"I don't know what else we can do," he said finally.

"Not that."

"There's nothing else for it, Kate."

"I won't have you murdering a man just because we can't think creatively."

He growled and scraped a hand down his face. "It's not a failure of imagination. It's about your life-"

"And yours," she said quietly.

"And mine," he added. "We're both threatened by this man."

"I meant. . .morally? I'm talking about preserving our future together, Castle." She uncrossed her arms and pushed forward to come for him, gripping him by the biceps and loosening his tight stance. "What lies between us."

"I don't understand. You'll stop loving me if I do this?"

She sighed. "No, Rick. I'm saying that if you do this, it's between us. It will always be there - how our life together was paid for in blood."

He clamped his mouth shut and glared down at her; she was so much shorter than him like this, without her heels or boots, just her flat feet and her body so thin under an ill-fitting outfit from Wal-Mart.

And yet such presence. He rarely noticed how slight she was, how angular the bones of her face or how narrow her waist when she exuded such power and held such steel in her body.

Like now.

He didn't _like_ her strict adherance to mere ethics in the face of an enemy like Bracken, but he understood it. He even admired it, though he didn't think they had the luxury.

"Don't you think that all our lives, the future of this country, are paid for in blood?" he said finally.

"I know that," she murmured, and her thumbs squeezed over his biceps. "But our future - our family - that can't be bought. You and I will work for it."

Their family.

He'd had a dream on a flight back to the States one time, a dream about a boy, and his face was still so clear in Castle's mind that he flinched at the surfacing image, inwardly shrank back from the idea of explaining to son exactly what he'd done.

But he'd still do it.

"You won't, Castle. Give us time to think of a better way. Together. We do this together."

She shifted closer, her fingers kneading his biceps until his arms loosened and fell away, letting her up against his chest. She sighed and drew him into an embrace, grasping his forearm and pulling it around her waist until he caught the hint and wrapped himself around her.

They'd learned this lesson before; he knew that. And while he wasn't yet ready to let go of the certainty that Bracken had to die, he was willing to compromise if they came up with something together.

"Promise me, Rick."

"Together," he said easily. "We do it together."

* * *

After she showered and dressed again, put on make-up and slid her feet into the flat shoes they'd bought, she didn't feel any more ready for what they had to do next.

But she came to him in the room and swallowed it down. "I'm ready."

He stood from where he'd been working on his phone and she saw he was no more willing to go than she was. So she reached out and snagged his left hand, brought it up to her mouth to kiss the wedding band now back in its place on his finger.

He cupped her jaw and leaned in to claim a better kiss, though soft and understanding. She sighed as he ran his fingers along her jaw and back through her hair, nuzzled into his touch for a moment longer.

"Let's go," she said finally. And she broke away from him first.

He carried the lone bag and followed her down the stairs; he checked them out while she hid her hands in the sleeves of her sweatshirt jacket, her palms still raw. The woman at the desk smiled but didn't seem much interested, and they headed outside into the sunlight.

Castle drove, his sunglasses banded around his face and blocking her view of his eyes. She wished she had her gun, wished she knew what to say to make either of them feel better.

They had a long drive ahead of them and the silence was going to bury her.

"Should you call ahead?" she asked.

"No. Bad idea. He'd - no."

Okay.

"Kate, just a warning?"

Uh-oh. "Yeah?"

"Black will be looking for me."

"I figured. You kinda went off the reservation, Castle."

"Yes. But you don't know why."

"You said I. . ." Kate trailed off as it hit her. How could he have known what she'd done? "I guess you were watching me."

"You could say that," he muttered, and the self-deprecation, the bitterness in his voice made her breath catch.

"What - how exactly? Why exactly?" she said quickly.

"You went to my place," he muttered. "I didn't know, but Black has been - has kept tabs on me. It was wired for lights and sound."

"It was. . ." Shock dragged through her and scooped her guts out. "Oh, shit. Even when we - with - oh shit, Castle."

"Yeah."

"He watched us?"

"I don't - I didn't ask. But I - I watched you, Kate. I saw - everything."

He had watched her. . .fall apart. Grieve. Deconstruct. She pressed a hand over her eyes and winced at the pull of her broken skin. She stared at the livid marks.

"You saw me drunk. And breaking a glass - I broke a glass. It fell. And then. . ."

"You drowned."

"I what?"

"You went under in the bath."

"I don't remember. . ." Oh, wait. Shit. She did. The pressure on her chest, the sense of her limbs floating up even as her body sank down. Opening her mouth to the intrusive, ever present water.

"You took a breath. It looked - purposeful."

"No," she refuted, shaking her head. It didn't stir any memory of _that_ though. "No. I wouldn't - it wouldn't have been - no."

"You fell in the broken glass."

She flexed her hands and could feel, even still, the throb of the cuts on her knees. "I - fell? Is that a nice way of saying I crawled through broken glass, Castle?"

He grunted and she knew it wasn't right to joke about it, but she didn't remember being - she remembered grief and darkness and the desolation of not having him. That was all too clear.

"I didn't try to kill myself," she said quietly.

"Okay."

Would he ever believe her? This was between them now too, not just Bracken and Black and the mess of things, but the weight of his responsibility towards her.

And she wasn't sure she could feel sorry for that.

"Your apartment had video. And what else?"

"A team was following you. They sent updates to me. Here." He shifted in the seat and she watched him pull out his phone again, use a thumb to unlock it and call up an app. She watched and then he handed it over, so she took it.

It was a status update, a constant feed. "They're going crazy. Can't find either of us," she murmured as she read. A host of input, the short-character updates and abbreviations she didn't know, but she could tell that the CIA task force was a flurry of activity.

"Yeah. They're - I made them look bad. But I. . .Kate, I can't say that I'm sorry I watched you. It helped to be able to see you and to know, to know the price for what I'd done - the price you were paying."

"I didn't ask for an apology," she said quickly. "I'm not. . .pleased that you - that I was - it's mortifying, really. But Castle, you've seen me at my worst. And so - now you know. Now I know. How much I really can't. . .how bad it gets. What I do."

She felt his hand reaching for hers and she took it, surprised by how much she'd needed that - a touch, a comfort, something to hold her up.

"It's something I'll have to work on," she said then. "I've been thinking. . .I need to see someone."

"Before we go back?" he asked, and the confusion in his voice was adorable. Really, it was.

"A professional, Rick," she chuckled. "I need to go back to therapy. I had a few months with Dr King at Stone Farm, but I need something like that again. I need to work on me."

"I can get Dr King," he said quietly. She darted a look at him and saw the fierce line of his jaw.

"You can?"

"I can."

"That would be. . .a good idea."

"Then I'll do that."

* * *

When they were ten miles out, he warned her again. "We won't make it another mile."

"Oh?"

And at that moment it happened: the roar of helicopter blades and the fierce light, the whine of nearly-silent engines in those ubiquitous black SUVs, then the loud command to pull over and turn off the vehicle.

Castle obeyed without hesitation, put both hands on the wheel. "Keep your hands on the dashboard."

Kate did as he said and the doors were all opened simultaneously, their exits covered by a phalanx of agents with guns.

At least Castle knew them all.

"Beckett is bringing me in," he said. "We stay together."

Agent Fitzhenry pushed to the front; he was gritting his teeth. "Sir."

"Fitz. Don't worry about it."

"If you both could step out of the vehicle."

"Kate stays with me."

"Yes, sir. Beckett stays with you."

Castle released the wheel and climbed down from the Range Rover, saw Beckett doing the same on her side. He shook his head at Fitz and stayed pressed against the car until Kate was led around the front and brought to his side.

"All right. My weapon is in the holster on my hip," Castle said.

Fitz took it cleanly, though they both knew it would never have happened unless Castle had allowed it. Fitz patted him down and then gave him a nod and gestured for the middle SUV. "If you'll come with us, sir."

Castle reached back and took Kate's hand in his, and she was the one to lead the way.

He was grateful. He didn't want to do this at all, but it'd been her idea to go back.

"I hope you know what you're doing," he murmured to her.

She climbed into the back seat and gave him a look. "I have no idea. I just know we can't run from the CIA, Rick."

That didn't make him feel better.

* * *

Beckett sat stiffly in the receiving room chair. Receiving room, right. She didn't need to see the furious and tense look on Castle's face to know it was a repurposed interrogation suite. The one way mirror and the not-at-all-subtle handcuff mount in the floor was enough to tell her that.

She kept her hands in her lap with Castle close at her side, both of them in light plastic chairs, while he put his palms flat on the blank table, stared boldly at the mirror. And, she assumed, Black behind it.

They didn't speak to each other, but she didn't need the words. She knew what this was, and she'd known going into it that turning themselves in would be complicated.

She was ready for it now.

The door opened and Agent Black himself came inside, meandering to the far wall with a manila folder tucked under one arm, his eyes devoid of light.

Kate studied him, cleared out everything she knew and had experienced with this man before, and approached the interview like the trained detective she was.

Black's nonchalant lean into the corner nonwithstanding, he was a man riddled with disappointment and frustration. Beyond the disgust he so casually dropped her way was a latent distrust - maybe even fear - that she'd never noticed before.

Her first meeting with him, she'd stood up to him and he'd acquiesced. He'd left her interrogation room even though he'd clearly disdained her and her precinct. Castle had backed her up - in what she now realized was a move completely unlike himself, not at all characteristic of his usual interactions.

That Castle had been so far held under her sway must have irritated Black to no end, she mused. She'd been brave that day, because she'd been ignorant of his methods and his reach, and because Castle had backed her up.

She had his support now, but she knew he didn't agree with her. When it came to it, she'd have to fight for her voice to be heard above the silent stonewall of the two men. Better start now.

"Agent Black," she said formally. She refused to stand, just as she had not stood in the conference room when she'd confronted him about trying to hijack her suspect interrogation. "So you weren't being merely cruel when you told me there would be no CIA service for him."

An actual smile flickered the edge of the man's mouth, pride and pleasure that he quickly shut down. But she'd seen it. He'd taken such _joy_ in her grief, her borderline hysterical demands for information.

At her side, Castle growled and stood up. She refused.

"Rick," she said quietly in warning. But he crossed his arms and remained on his feet and she pressed her lips together to keep Black from seeing how proud that made her.

Castle was his own man; Black could at least see that. It was part of the plan she and Castle had hatched in the car on the way. The plan to break his father's hold.

"There was no such service," Black finally answered, the smirk curling up the corners of his lips again. His wide shoulders and thick hands, his craggy face and the mud of his eyes made him look like an unmoving mountain. On Castle, the width and breadth of him made him look strong and capable rather than inflexible and cold.

Martha was the difference between the two, and Kate absolutely needed the time and patience out of Rick to show him that, to let him see that he wasn't his father, that he was already a man apart.

Black might be aiming for the Director's chair, Black might be scheming and plotting to get that power, including murdering a senator, but Castle didn't have to be anywhere near it. Castle wasn't his father's man. He was his own.

"We know what you're trying to do," she said into the silence.

She waited for that telltale hardening of the skin around the man's eyes, the way his finger crooked against the manila folder - they gave him away. She let the deeper truth, the dirtier secret go for now, and she focused instead on the immediate problem.

"I know you think I'm the worst thing that's ever happened to him," she continued. "You wanted to break us. Break me. Break my hold on him. I think you know now that will never happen."

Black crossed his arms over his chest and the imposing stance was back, the looming sense of authority and control. "I see."

"I won't be bullied by you," Castle said then. "But you don't have to worry. The agent you made of me isn't in peril - she doesn't put me in jeopardy or cause me to slack off in my duties. But the job _will_ go differently from now."

"Oh, really?" Black said, a lift of his eyebrow.

Kate kept her gaze straight on the man, didn't flinch. "Really."

Castle took a step closer, his hand coming to the back of his empty chair. "Beckett is my motivation to make the world right, to keep fighting these endless wars. Espionage has the highest rate of turnover - you know that. But I do it for her. I've always done it for her; I just didn't know she was what I'd been looking for."

"Sentiment."

Kate tilted her head. "No," she said quietly. "It's just how it works. How he works. How I work. There has to be a point, a reason to get up in the morning and put on the gun and the badge and offer yourself up to the chance that you might not come home."

Black's gaze shifted ever so subtly to her. She pressed on.

"What we have - that's the reason. And we're not asking for your blessing or your permission. We're just explaining how it will be."

Black's face soured and he opened his mouth to debate her, but Castle was straightening up and interrupting.

"She makes it worth it. All of this - the assignments, the training, the long weeks away, the never having a home, the threat of death or enemy capture - coming back to Kate makes it worth it. Knowing she lives, knowing she's free and happy and doing what she does to serve and protect people and that I can join that, we can do that together - that keeps me here, Agent Black. And that is the best you're going to get."

Black was back to the unflinching stoic, and his eyes were so lifeless that it was beginning to get to her.

But she wouldn't back down; she couldn't. She stood up finally and touched the table with the tips of her fingers, kept her eyes on his father.

"You're lucky," she said firmly. "You're lucky that the best you get from him happens to be tangled up in protecting _us._ Me. He knows that doing his job as a CIA agent means keeping me safe, keeping our life _safe_. And so you're going to get one of the most dedicated and determined men out in the field."

She took a long breath and Castle finished it for them.

"For her sake, I am the best agent you've got."


	10. Chapter 10

**Close Encounters 6**

* * *

Castle hustled them into the office that housed his makeshift work station, and the moment he had the door shut, she turned into him and grabbed him in a tight embrace.

"Shit, I'm shaking," she laughed into his neck.

He palmed the back of her head and kissed her fiercely, pushing into her mouth, needing her. He backed her up until she hit the desk and she gasped, a laugh bubbling out, and then his thigh was wedged between her legs and she was moaning a little as she rocked against him.

"You still shaking?"

"For an entirely different reason," she gasped, laughing again and clutching him harder. The feel of her against him, the tight grip of her arms and the squeeze of her thighs made him want things, ache for things, and he'd take her right here if he wasn't one hundred percent certain his father was monitoring the cameras.

"We're streaming live," he murmured against her throat. "Just so you know."

"Let him watch," she groaned, but he felt the shiver that tore down her spine, the catch to her breath that meant she wasn't so thrilled with that. Or she was, but it was hitting her just how much his father had already seen of her.

It was hitting him too. The kitchen floor, her bloodied hands and legs, no clothes straight out of the bath, and the terrible, dark grief pouring out of her. He wrapped himself tighter around her to dispel the thought, but she seemed to sense it anyway.

"What is it with your father catching me naked?" she muttered. "Perv."

He choked on a laugh and lifted his head to look at her; she wasn't smiling but she was close.

"I'm sor-"

"Seriously, you apologize one more time and I'm going to cut out your tongue. What happened, happened, Castle. We can't change it. I don't think I want to change it. Now we know."

He nodded against her cheek and brought her closer, felt her teeth at his earlobe.

"Let go of me, baby. I need to call the boys and then Carrie as well. See what's going on."

But he didn't want to let go, he didn't ever want to let go. He was done with letting go.

He was going to find the command subroutines for the cameras in this office and turn them off. And then he'd take her against the door until the memory of his death faded and lost its hold on her.

"I love you, Kate."

* * *

When Castle was deep in his research and catching up on email for other projects, Beckett slipped out of his office and into the hallway with the excuse that she needed to call Ryan. With the new phone in hand but not dialing, she paced away from his door and didn't have long to wait.

Black found her at the end of the hall; even though she was on the lookout for him, he still came up on her unexpectedly.

"Detective Beckett."

She gritted her teeth and thought of her father. Jim Beckett had opened his home to Castle, had smiled and teased and shared meals with them; her father had kissed her forehead and reassured her that Castle would heal of the knife wound and their relationship would as well.

Her father was a good man, and he and her mother had instilled in her the sense of justice and the law, right and wrong, her father taking up where Johanna Beckett had left off when she'd died.

There were elements of those principles in Castle too. She'd seen his tenderness and compassion, experienced it firsthand as well as seen it poured out on others. He fought to make meaning of the world and to have purpose in his life; he wanted home and family and _her_.

She would do whatever it took to protect that man. The super spy didn't need her, but Rick did.

"Agent Black," she said finally, nodding coolly.

"I can't say I'm happy to see you here," he said. "Why exactly are you roaming my halls?"

She ignored the dig. "You're not going to like it, but things are going to have to change for him."

"Because you say so?" Black said, lifting one thick eyebrow as if he found her words entirely without merit.

"He's a man, not a machine," she insisted. "I know that's what you'd hoped to build in him - to be a pet robot, to be another unthinking foot soldier in your army. But he and I are building something else, together. We're building a life. And I won't let you take that from him."

"You know nothing."

"I know there's more to the story of a little boy abandoned by his mother. I've talked to Martha, so has Castle. I don't believe for a second she gave him up - not after knowing you. What'd you do to her? What'd you say?"

The flash of barely suppressed fury that came over Black's face actually shook her. He was a man on the edge, and she hadn't realized just how much she personally affected him. How much he hated her.

He _hated_ her.

"Never mind," she said quickly. "It's not important. What is important is that you know you don't hold him anymore. He's not your pet, not your machine to wind up and set loose. And I won't let you keep doing that to him."

"You have no idea," Black said slowly. "You have no idea what you've done to him."

"It's only what he's done to me," Beckett answered, shaking her head. "I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"He's my son," Black countered, looking for all the world like the words signified next to nothing, were merely a statement pulled out to trump her and not meaningful whatsoever.

"He's my partner," she said back. "But more than that? He's Castle. He's a man - he's his own man. And I don't even know if you care - but he's warm and generous and compassionate and funny - he's hilarious actually, and he makes the worst situations better. He's worth fighting for. Even if that means I'm fighting you. Every step of the way. I will fight you."

Black regarded her like an insect, nothing more, nothing less. "I won't have you ruin everything I've accomplished in him."

"And I won't let you keep crushing his soul. You don't get to have him anymore. You're on warning," she growled back.

It took a supreme effort of will to turn her back on Agent Black and walk away without faltering.

She expected, at any moment, for each step to be her last.

* * *

While Kate called her father and the boys, Castle filled out paperwork to register their Italian wedding with the state of New York.

He felt a reckless pride crashing around in his chest and he couldn't wait to show her the forms; he'd file them himself as soon as he could sneak them both out of here. His father would have their every movement scrutinized, but he didn't even care. He wanted her to know how important this was, how much he wanted a new life with her.

He figured they'd have to meet the boys somewhere in the city to exchange the latest information, especially since Ryan had figured it out. He ought to be man enough to look them in the eye and take whatever they dished out about what he'd done.

And then she'd mentioned her father a few times, and he honestly wanted Jim to know he was fine. He wanted to show up and shake the man's hand because he deserved more respect than Castle's sudden 'demise' had shown any of the Beckett family.

Including the boys at the 12th.

He spread his palms over the paperwork and flattened it, his heart pounding. Even though that confrontation with his father had been vicious - coldly, which was the only way Black ever was vicious - he felt like so much had been lifted from his shoulders. A dark cloud had been burned off with the heat of Beckett's strength at his side.

He grinned and heard the door click open, turned to share it with her.

"Hey, look what I did," he said, bouncing to his feet with the papers.

She gave him a faint smile, her hand reaching out to stroke down his forearm. "What'd you do?" she murmured.

"You okay?"

"Fine. Yeah. Talked to my Dad."

"We should stop by," he said quietly, seeing what this was about. Her father had - yeah. It was important to let him know, to explain himself. Her father had probably been upset, naturally, about what Castle had done to her. After everything.

"Stop by?" she said. "Castle. You're dead. You-"

"I don't see how it matters. So what if Bracken knows I'm alive? Let him come. I don't care. I've got his number."

Kate pressed her lips together and shook her head at him, wrapped both arms around his waist and leaned in. She put that tense line of her mouth to his neck and sighed out a kiss.

"Kate?"

"What did you do?" she said again.

He grinned and shifted out of her arms to show her the paperwork he'd filled out. "Just needs your signature, Mrs. - well, Rodgers. But I don't expect you to change your name when it's not really my name either."

She let out a laughing breath and took the papers from him, reading them over. He stroked his hand up and down her arm as she studied them, his pride welling up more and more. His joy. He wanted this. They needed this.

"Where do I sign?" she said finally.

* * *

"You think this is such a good idea?" she asked him again.

"What?" Castle turned back to her as he snagged the keys from the ring in the underground lot. "Filing? I think it's-"

She rolled her eyes at him. "Not that. We're doing that. I mean leaving. Your father-"

"I'm not concerned about that."

"But isn't the plan that you're dead?"

He shrugged, even though he felt the tendrils of doubt snaking around him. But no. No, she'd been right. "I don't see how it does either of us any good. I'm not going to parade downtown or anything, but if Bracken finds out, then so what? You and I will stay off the radar here until-"

"You're not killing him."

Castle clutched his fingers around the keys and glanced at her. "Until we have a plan, then."

She studied him for a moment longer and then she reached out and took the keys from him. "I'm tired of you always driving. My turn."

She sauntered off.

And he followed. He always would.

* * *

She handled the Range Rover like an expert, although he assumed she'd had both Academy training and field ops training which required driving courses. She was alert and deft with it, which was hard to do in a big four-wheel drive utility vehicle, and he liked the flex of her fingers over the steering wheel as she navigated city traffic.

Hot. She was so hot.

"Stop staring, Castle."

"Can't help it."

"You better. Or I'm pulling into a parking garage and having my way with you."

"Then I am definitely not stopping."

She glanced over at him with a look that made his whole body ignite and he seriously wanted her to pull over. First moment to themselves in six hours and the late afternoon light made her golden and tasty, like ripe fruit.

"Rick," she breathed, her eyes darting back to traffic.

"We're in the Bronx," he got out. "But there's a garage-"

"I know it. Parking Can Be Fun," she supplied, and she cut her head to look, then turned quickly towards the garage they both - apparently - knew about.

She looked impatient and glorious and hot for him, and he had to look away.

They parked. And it was fun.

* * *

"That was so unprofessional," Kate groaned, pressing her hand to her forehead as they got out of the car. A diner in the Bronx quite close to their _parking_ spot had been the rendezvous for their meeting with Esposito and Ryan, and she knew she looked as disheveled and sexed as she felt.

Espo was going to be so disgusted.

"Unprofessional but necessary," Castle said at her side. She grunted and elbowed him away as his breath landed hotly on her neck.

"Necessary my ass."

He squeezed her ass and she smacked his arm for it, but his hands on her felt good, like every touch of skin against skin somehow knit her back together again. She hated that, she loved it, and she wasn't sure yet what to do with it - how much she needed him.

She felt stronger for it, for having him, commanding and in control again. Bracken was once again put into his place - a twisted and corrupt man who had schemed and murdered his way to a position of power. And she was going to _do_ something about it; she was going to bring him to justice.

And Castle was going to help. Together. Partners.

"Uh-oh," he muttered.

She turned her head to follow his line of sight and caught the faces of her team as they waited just outside the diner.

"Uh-oh is right," she sighed. Esposito was livid and it didn't look like Ryan planned on holding him back.

They approached her boys and Esposito stepped up, all male posturing and swagger; Beckett put her hand out to his chest to calm him down but instead, he dodged her and stood toe to toe with Castle.

"You disgust me."

"Esposito," she said harshly. But Castle didn't say anything. He only stood silent.

"One too many times, man," Esposito said then, and it was like both men knew exactly what happened next but Beckett had no idea. She didn't see it coming at all.

Esposito fisted his hand and let loose with a brutal right hook.

And Castle took it.

* * *

They huddled around the formica table top as one, Castle pressing the bag of ice to his cheek and waving off Kate's probing fingers. He had a plateful of eggs and toast and even bacon - he was letting himself have bacon; he'd just gotten socked in the face - and she was picking at fruit and waffles. When she wasn't picking at him.

He glanced across the seat and caught Esposito's exaggerated shrug, the detective's glance falling on Beckett before coming back to Castle. He nodded and stopped pushing Kate off, let her look at the puffy skin and the mottled bruising.

"You need some tylenol," she murmured, and her fingers stroked down his cheek to land on his forearm. "We'll pick some up on the way back."

"To your father's," he murmured.

"Right." She shook her head at him again and he went back to his breakfast for dinner with her hovering around him like she was bordering on pissed but resigned to it.

He pushed a bite of waffles in his mouth and met Esposito's eyes again, gave the man a subtle head nod. He could tell he was already cool with Ryan once more, and the punch in the face had restored things with Esposito. Now to get Beckett to stop fretting over him.

"Javier," she started.

Castle put his hand under the table and caught her knee, squeezed. She gave him a sideways look and opened her mouth again.

"You can't just _punch_-"

He squeezed harder and she shot him a glare.

"We're good," Castle said quietly. "I deserved it. It had to happen."

Her mouth dropped open and the beautiful and deadly spark lit up her eyes. She didn't seem to be happy with the way they'd preserved the rightness of things, and she turned once more to Esposito.

"Don't you ever punch him again, Javier. You understand me?"

The steel in her voice was unmistakable, and he let his eyes fall to Ryan's, the two of them suffering through in silence.

"I'll punch him when he deserves it," Espo said finally. "He stops deserving it then we ain't got a problem."

"I'll handle him; you handle yourself," she bit back. "I don't need either of you protecting me. That's how this got started in the first place - acting like I can't take the truth, like I can't stand up for myself. So back off."

Castle shot a quick glance to Espo and the man leveled him with a look. She was undoing everything he'd accomplished by taking that hit.

Castle stroked his fingers lightly up her thigh until she turned to him.

"My face hurts. Stop yelling," he muttered and then he leaned in and met her mouth for a quick, artless kiss.

Then tension dissolved out of her in a moment, and when he pulled back, he had to suffer through another round of her poking at his face with that tight and frustrated concern in her eyes.

But Ryan gave him a nod and he was back in.

The boys from the 12th were her family; he wasn't about to screw that up.

* * *

Ryan handed her the confetti remnants of Smith's file and Beckett sighed as she peered inside the envelope. Yeah, about what she'd thought.

"What'd Mick get for us?" she asked, lifting her head.

Esposito pushed over the file folder, tapped it once. "All in there. We've got copies, Ryan and I, and we're working on it off the books."

"Don't let Gates catch you," she said quickly.

"We've found what we think are bank accounts - offshore. We'll know more tomorrow."

"Keep on this," Kate answered them, her throat tight with it. "I don't know that it will actually help us at all, but if we can bring him down with anything at all-"

"Like Al Capone being put away on tax evasion," Ryan inserted helpfully.

She rolled her eyes. "Well, I'm looking for something more than tax evasion, but. . .I'll take it."

She felt Castle so still and quiet at her side and glanced over at him. She wouldn't tell the boys his plan, but she felt she owed them something.

"The CIA has a plan in the place," she said finally. "Something they're working on. So we're not doing this alone. But I want to do it through the NYPD, guys. I don't want to have to rely on their. . .methods."

Esposito's eyes darted to Castle's and away, and Beckett had the uncomfortable feeling that the man knew exactly what methods she was talking about.

Well, so much the better.

"Yeah," Espo said slowly. "We got you. We'll stay on top of this. What are you going to be doing?"

She sighed and glanced to Castle. "Working on a new strategy."

Ryan cleared his throat and the silence that fell over their table made her anxious to get going. Castle was supposed to be dead, and even if he didn't care about it, she did. She didn't want Bracken going after him again.

Kate pressed her fingers to the discolored skin beneath his eye, wondering how in the world she was supposed to explain this when they got back to his father.

Shit.

Oh yeah, right, she was_ good_ for him. Good for getting him punched in the face. Four hours they'd been out of Black's sight and already Castle was black and blue.

He tangled his fingers in hers and drew her away from his poor broken face. His nose looked swollen too and she wouldn't doubt that Esposito had nailed him with that haymaker of a punch. He'd put some serious torsion into it.

"Tylenol," she said firmly.

"I'll be fine, Beckett."

She gave up messing with him, even though her heart still fluttered too hard to see him damaged. Blackened bones and that wedding band in a plastic evidence bag were never far from her mind.

She tried to go back to her fruit, but it was soured and seemed to make her stomach churn. She avoided the orange slices just to keep away from the acid, and tried picking out the pears and strawberries.

Her appetite was just gone, but now she could feel him studying her in return, and she tried to reclaim that feeling she'd had driving out here, of being strong and capable and on an even keel once more.

She wasn't. Not exactly. She was still in that breathless free fall of having him back - where she knew that the ground was rapidly approaching and she still didn't have a plan.

She had no plan. She needed a plan. A way to save them both.

"You done?" he asked softly.

She nodded and he grabbed her empty coffee mug, took his as well, and left the table to hunt down their waitress.

She let out a breath and glanced to the boys. "He's going to. . ."

Espo nodded tersely. "I could see that."

Ryan hunched into the booth. "See what? What's going on?"

"I won't let him do it," she said fiercely. "That's not how this gets done. You guys - I really need your help on this."

"You have it, Beckett."

Ryan was nodding as well, even though he still looked a little lost.

"Thanks."

"Castle says the word though," Esposito drawled out. "And I'm there. I want this guy gone."

Ryan's mouth dropped open and he shot her a fast look. "Gone. As in gone-gone. No."

Beckett's chest eased slightly. At least Ryan wasn't stupid.

"Espo. We do this right."

He looked supremely unconvinced.

* * *

"Boys are stupid," she growled.

Uh-oh. He'd gone from _man_ to _boy_ in the space of an hour. A man in the car with her straddling his lap as they parked, and a boy as they walked out of the diner. He was in for it.

Castle followed after her down the street and reached out to take her hand; she allowed it at least, an easy swing that kept them together as they threaded through pedestrian traffic. He got funny looks for the bruised and puffy cheek, but he had Kate's hand.

"Esposito wants to _help_ you," she said suddenly, her face swinging around to glare at him.

"More the merrier. I could find a job for him on the team."

"No. Hell, no, Rick Castle."

He pressed his lips together but couldn't fight the smile; it poured out of him and licked right up to the border of her shores. She narrowed her eyes at him but he could see the answering smile flickering to life in those green-gold depths.

Her eyes were just amazing. Knocking him out, really. Totally knocking him out. He wanted to stop dead still in the middle of the sidewalk and grab her and just - yeah.

Be stupid.

Not cool, Castle.

Instead he laced his fingers through hers - his only concession to the sudden swamping need to have her again - and she seemed to think that was his way of giving in.

But if Esposito wanted in on it, he wasn't taking that away from him.

Sometimes a man had to step up and take care of business.

* * *

"Are you sure?" she asked, even as she guided the Range Rover onto the gravel lane.

"We're already here," Castle said back.

"But now you're. . .punched."

He gave her a laugh for that, and she glanced over at him in the passenger seat, still pressing the ice pack against his cheek. It had begun to melt, running down to the sleeve of his army-style jacket and making a dark stain.

"I'm okay, Beckett. And your dad - he's a good man. I don't think he'll punch me." He paused and she could practically taste the hesitation in the air. "He won't, will he? He won't really punch me. He might actually punch-"

"He won't punch you," she sighed. "He's a lawyer. He solves his problems with words, like a civilized human being."

"Hey, now. I'm civilized."

"Hardly."

She felt his hand come to her knee, cold even through her Wal-Mart jeans, and she shivered and released the wheel long enough to clutch his fingers.

"But you like it," he murmured, and his thumb did interesting things to her inside thigh.

"Mm, I love it," she said, hated herself a little for how breathless he was making her.

"Time to face the music," he said, leaning in to softly kiss her cheek. "Again. I really hope I don't get punched."


	11. Chapter 11

**Close Encounters 6**

* * *

Her father was on the front porch waiting for them; she'd called ahead to warn him once they were only a few miles away. He had one arm propped on the post, his hip at the railing, leaning into it like he was casual and easy-going.

He was easy-going; she hadn't been wrong about that. But she was apprehensive about this meeting. Castle meant something to her father as well, and the grief of losing that possible future had struck him too. She'd seen it on his face at the funeral, felt it in the way he'd kept his distance afterwards. She'd known, peripherally, that he was there and that she could lean on him, but he'd given her space and crawled back to his own home to lick his own wounds.

Neither of them were any good at grieving. She figured this was something they might have to revisit, figure out. But not today.

Castle came to the bottom of the porch steps and waited even as Kate climbed the stairs; she paused and turned only halfway up, glanced back at Rick as he stayed still. When nothing was said and nobody moved, she looked to her father.

He swallowed and dropped the arm from the railing, put his hands on his hips. Still he said nothing.

"Sir," Castle said quietly.

It had been Jim. When Castle had come up to the cabin to heal from his knife wounds, they'd gotten close. She felt her chest squeeze at the loss of trust, the way her father guarded himself still.

Because of her mother.

So she snaked her arm in her father's and tugged him down a step, pressed a kiss to his cheek. "Dad, please," she murmured close to his ear.

"Rick," he got out finally.

Kate ignored all their usual family secrets, the way they protected and huddled around themselves to keep out the worst of things, and she reached across the short distance to grab Castle's hand. "He's hurt, Rick. Because you left us. But, Dad, he couldn't stay gone. He couldn't go through with it. That makes up for a lot."

Both men flushed at her words, Castle shooting her a panicked look while her father glared at her, their cheeks both stained crimson.

"I'm tired of fixing things," she said wearily. "Dad, where's the coffee?"

Her father nodded and then turned to lead them inside.

She felt Castle's quick kiss at the base of her neck, his soft breath as he spoke for her ears only. "Have I said I love you? I love you, Kate."

* * *

When they shuffled inside, Castle realized that Kate was asking her father about his security detail.

"How many are outside?" Kate murmured.

Jim shrugged. "Two. But it's easier out here. More defensible."

"It's the NYPD?" he asked Kate, snagging her elbow.

She nodded at him. "Just in case. Couldn't take the chance."

He swallowed and nodded, mutely watching Jim as he poured them all coffee. His thoughts were tangled with things he hadn't considered - protection for her father, maybe even the boys, though he doubted they'd take it, even the simple coordination with the local police. He'd done none of that, had hidden himself away and attacked the one problem he could control.

Castle sat down heavily at the kitchen table with the Becketts and cupped his hands around the hot mug. The rich and textured scent of coffee did something to put him at ease and he finally took a slow sip, watching Kate for signs on how to proceed.

But she didn't seem interested in facilitating things here and Castle was at a loss for words.

Jim fingered the handle of his mug and twisted it back and forth across the wooden top. Castle curled his fingers tighter over his own and decided to put himself out there.

He wasn't good at explaining, and Kate was tired of his apologies, but there were things that had to be said, that now could be said, and Castle ought to say them. Since he was alive, since her father had been at his funeral and grieved the loss as well.

"Sir," he started, still unsure of where they stood. Her father at least gave him the respect of meeting his gaze. Castle tried not to disappoint him. "When I was here recovering, you treated me like family. You opened your home and trusted me with your daughter, and I can't thank you enough for that."

"Rick-"

"I wish I'd done a lot of things differently. But I didn't know - I couldn't see a way out. I did what I thought would keep Kate safe, even though I sacrificed her trust and yours to do it."

Next to him, he felt Kate shift and press her knee against his, but he kept going.

"I don't know that I can ever make up for what I did. For what I put Kate through. And you. I've never had. . .people like this. People who depended on me or whom I was responsible to, and to be honest, I don't know how to be that man."

He swallowed and fought to clear his throat, dropping his head to the wood grain of the table, trying to find words to make it right.

Suddenly her father's voice came, strong and quiet. Confident. "At least you're learning, Rick. Learning how to be that man."

He lifted his head and squeezed his hands into fists, felt his breath catch. "Yes, sir. I am. Kate's - she deserves. . .everything."

The reserved mask of Jim's face broke and let out a brief flicker of a smile. "Yeah. I can agree to that. You'll make it. Kate won't let you fail, son."

* * *

She had no idea how Castle had done it, but after only a few hours, the three of them were grouped together in the living room, talking and idly watching tv like no time at all had passed.

No time, and no funeral.

Her father was in his chair, surveying the scene and making comments on the basketball game, while she and Castle sat on the couch. Once the effort of moderating had seemed less necessary between them, she'd stretched out and put her back to the arm, her feet in Castle's lap so that his hands fell warm and heavy over her.

She realized she was drifting off, dozing really, and that the two were talking about her obliquely, like she wouldn't notice or understand. But the reality was that the haze of daydreams was so thick and the comfortable embrace of the couch so possessive that Kate found herself slipping in and out of consciousness, unaware of what her father and Castle might be sharing.

After some time, she found his arm sliding under her neck and a whispered entreaty for her to _slide down_ or maybe that was _lie down_ and she was curling at his lap and falling asleep.

* * *

Maybe it should have been strange, sitting on Jim's couch with Jim's daughter asleep in his lap, her mouth open on his thigh. But it wasn't. Castle kept his hands on her shoulder and the top of her head, brushing his fingers through her hair, but that was it. Jim made comments on the basketball game, explaining rules when Castle asked, and if his eyes ocassionally strayed to his daughter, he didn't comment on their position.

And then he did. Sort of.

"You two going to stay here tonight?"

It was later than Castle had intended, but now that he saw how exhausted Kate was, how she must have been since. . .since he _died_, he couldn't say no to that.

"Looks like. You mind? We didn't bring anything with us, but I didn't realize she was so tired."

Jim eased forward in his chair and stood. "I'll make up the bed."

Castle startled. "I should help-"

"No, son. You stay right there. That's help enough. I'm sure Kate hasn't had good sleep since. . ." He waved his hand and moved off down the hallway, leaving Castle on the couch, trapped by the weight of his responsibility.

Kate hadn't slept. Or she'd cried herself to sleep and woke hours later. He'd known that, he'd seen it, but to know just how comfortable and safe she felt here at her father's cabin - and with only a couple of NYPD uniforms out there-

"Castle?" she murmured.

He lifted his hand from her ear and she turned to her back, staring up at him for a moment.

"Hey," he said quietly. "Your dad's making up the guest bed."

She hummed and curled back in on herself, turning into him and practically snuggling. He hovered his hands over her and then settled one at her hip and the other at the top of her head.

His throat was tight with the weight of everything so very precious.

* * *

He had meant to carry Kate into the bedroom and get some sleep himself, early as it was, but it didn't happen. She was out, and Jim had changed the sheets, and then the two of them had sat in the living room and finished the basketball game while Kate slept in his lap. It was eleven, and the night outside had come creeping in through the open blinds, and now Jim got up to close them, settle the house for the night.

Castle stayed where he was, an arm looped around Kate's waist so that his forearm and palm braced her back, and Jim came back to sit down again, a curious silence between them.

He figured it was up to him, and rightly so.

"She told you we got married in Rome?" he said first.

Jim chuckled. "She did. Though she said the details were classified."

He grinned back, the two of them sitting mostly in darkness. The tv was muted and the blue light of the nightly news strobed into the room.

"That is technically true," Castle said finally. "But still. We filled out the paperwork for the state of New York; we're going to file it tomorrow. I had wanted to get it done today, but we thought it was smarter to lie low for right now."

"Don't put it off too long. Or she'll never do it."

Castle nodded, felt his lips twitch. "I'd noticed that about her."

"She'll tell you she doesn't believe in fate or destiny or signs from the universe, but I think she wants to. She wants there to be a greater purpose in everything, especially for all the bad she's seen. So if filing the paperwork looks too hard or it's not convenient-"

"She'll think it's not meant to be," he finished with a rush. "I - yeah. I've seen her do that with other things."

Was he proud? He was proud. Yeah. He'd unconsciously realized that about her, that she did that with things, that she held out so much hope for life in a theoretical way, but in reality, she expected it to go wrong, to not be ideal; she expected for it to hurt.

She was tough and she was prepared for the worst, and she made it through. But she'd allowed herself to believe in them, the two of them together, and when he'd died, the grief had been so much worse for all that. Because she'd put everything into that belief in them.

"And she's not really a morning person," Jim continued. "She fakes it."

She faked it. Castle grinned and curled his fingers at her neck, his pulse beating hard. "Oh yeah?"

"When she was a little girl, we had to drag her out of bed," Jim chuckled. "Getting her ready for school wasn't a problem; she was too conscientious for her own good. But on Saturday and Sundays. . .trying to get her up was a nightmare."

"The weekend. I understand. I hated getting up, but my father made me." Training. There was always training or lessons or drills. He couldn't remember a single instance of sleeping in late.

"But to be still in bed at eleven? No, we couldn't have that. Johanna came up with the perfect solution. She made brunch on Sundays and the smell of pancakes or waffles would pull Katie right out of bed. After a couple years, Kate would be up and helping, the two of them together in the kitchen."

He had to remind himself to not grip her too hard, to not clutch her against his chest. The vision of some ten year old Kate with her mother, the warm and familial scene, made Castle ache.

"We want kids," he blurted out. "I want kids with her. And until now, I'd just - seen this serious little boy with her eyes, having a son, but. . ."

"A daughter," Jim said with relish. "Best and worst thing to ever happen to you. Nothing will be the same after you have a daughter."

"Yes," he rasped, staring down at Kate still asleep in his lap, the loose fist at his hip, the fall of her hair. He lifted his head to see Jim grinning at him.

"Son, you get it all straight in your head and then you tell her. The whole story - how you see it. That'll get her. She's a sucker for a good story."

Castle grinned back. "I can do that. I can definitely do that."

Where was that detective's notebook of hers?

It was time to start dreaming. With her. For her. She deserved to have back that family she'd lost when her mother had died. And they could create it together.

* * *

She woke sometime in the night to find Castle pressed hard against her hipbones, lying over her in the guest room bed. She grunted and pushed on his torso, but he didn't wake and he didn't move. Her hips ached and her knee felt twisted and she torqued her body and finally rolled them over.

Her heart was pounding with the exertion and her head was swimming; she felt dizzy even lying down.

When had she really eaten? The fruit at the diner this afternoon as a kind of early dinner/late lunch. They'd gotten something together at a sandwich place, there was that, and she'd scarfed it down. Before that. . .she couldn't remember; she didn't want to remember.

Before that was the funeral and not having him and-

Kate groaned and her stomach growled fiercely in the darkness. Castle was out, hard, and she pushed away from the mattress and slid her legs out of bed. She came around to his side and pressed a kiss to his forehead, brushing the hair off his face, and she realized she'd be doing that kind of thing for a while.

Until he felt real to her again.

Beckett left the room and went searching for food, her stomach cramping. She was no longer light-headed, but she was fuzzy with sleep, and she didn't realize her father was sitting at the table until she nearly fell over him, stubbing her toe.

"Dad," she groaned, hopping back from the table. "Ouch."

"Get your toe? Sorry, sweetheart. Here. Sit down."

"Ow, ow, ow. I'm starving. I gotta get-"

"Sit. I'll get you some cereal. Or whatever you want."

"Cheese," she said suddenly. "Cheese and crackers maybe?"

"I got that," he laughed softly, putting his hand to her shoulder as she finally sank down in the chair. "Talked with your - husband."

She groaned and buried her head in her hands at the tone of her father's voice. "Are you serious? We are not having this conversation."

"Why not?" he said amicably, pulling open the fridge door.

"I'm not 17, and he's definitely not Paul Mason or oh, man, Johnny-"

"Johnny Danger, I always called him. And no. He's not. He's definitely better than any of them. Or Will. Or that damn training officer-"

"Nothing happened," she grit out. "Nothing happened with Royce and you know it."

"But he came back and completely-"

"Dad, that's over. And Castle-"

"Wants to have a family with you."

She froze and her father kept right on going, setting a plate of cheese and crackers in front of her.

"I liked him before this. Hated him a little when he came to the door this afternoon-"

"Dad-"

"But. He's been - a son. I know it. I'm the last to admit these things; you and I are both terrible at taking the guards off the doors, relaxing long enough to have someone matter. But."

She peeled a slice of cheddar from the stack and pushed it into her mouth, listening.

"You forgive your son when he comes home to you," her father said finally. "You open your arms and invite him in and he takes up his old place because he's your family, and you can't do anything else. Wouldn't do anything else."

"Doesn't mean it's easy," she said back, breaking the cracker with her thumb and finger.

"Not for people like us," he sighed.

She nodded, playing with her food as she tried to sort out the things all trapped in her chest. How she wanted that life with Castle, how afraid it made her, how the last few days' grief had done something to her - had broken her in a way she didn't yet fully know. And what it would take to fix that in herself, to again trust in the life they were building. . .

"It's worth it though; don't you think, sweetheart?"

She settled her head into her hand and tried to find an answer that wasn't as pathetic as she felt. It would be work, but she didn't really have a choice. It wasn't like she could not be with him. The work of being without him was worse, infinitely worse, than the work of trusting it again.

Jim cleared his throat. "His father. . ."

Kate lifted her head and stared.

"Not much of one, is he?"

"Not - no. Not at all. Dad, he - he's emotionally manipulative. To Castle. To me."

"Yeah, I got the impression that faking his own death wasn't Rick's idea."

"No. Black's. Of course." She sucked on a piece of cheese and swallowed.

Her father folded his arms at his chest. "And with you?"

"He plays mind games. It's nothing I can't handle."

He didn't look convinced, and something about the knowing in his eyes made it all spill out.

"I can when it's between Black and me, when Castle has my back. It's nothing, not important, just another thing to deal with, you know? But when Black starts twisting Castle into knots, I can't get to him anymore. I can't reach him."

"It's his father," Jim said with a shrug. "You're asking him to turn off decades of - well, of abuse."

She nodded, pressing her finger hard into the cracker so that it broke in half. "I just - I wish he'd stop falling for it. It makes it my fault when-"

"How is it at all your fault, Kate?"

She glanced up at the harshness of his voice and realized he was defending her. He was her father. He was a good man, and she was lucky to have him.

"Just - I hate that Black can get him with just one word. One word - my name. He says my name and Castle suddenly loses all ability to think rationally about anything. It's because of me."

Her father sighed and reached across the table to still her fingers. She realized she'd crumbled all of her crackers.

"Sweetheart, that's just what love does. And obviously, I'm no better a man than Rick - see what happened to me when your mother died?"

"Me either," she said softly, shaking her head. "I'm not any better at handling it. It makes me - all out of control."

Her father laughed a little at that and she glanced to his face, saw the gentle amusement and was glad for it. At least they were both at a point where they could be honest and deal with it - their mutual failures.

"I want to make him stronger," she said suddenly, the urgent clutch of it in her heart. "I want him to make me stronger too."

Her father sighed. "Sweetheart, look at you. I think you've already been made stronger for having him in your life. It doesn't feel like it because - like you already admitted - love does take it out of your control. But you're stronger. You've done so much. You're not who you were."

"But him?" she said, feeling small and desperate all of the sudden. "I make him - he loses sight of. . .I'm no help to him at all."

"That's not true," her father said forcefully. And even though she knew he _had_ to say stuff like this, he was her father, it still helped.

"It's not?"

"No. He's here, isn't he? You think he'd ever have the guts to show up here if it weren't for you? He told me about Javi punching him."

She snorted and shook her head. "Men."

"He humbled himself for that, to take what he deserved. If he didn't love you, he couldn't do that."

"That doesn't seem to be defending your case, counselor," she muttered.

Her father laughed at that. "What I'm saying is - he's a changed man. He's working on it, and so are you."

She rubbed a finger along the edge of the table and studied the grain, tried to pull her thoughts together. "I'm just not sure what to do to help him, though. How to reach him when Black uses me against him."

"Not to the change the subject," her father said slowly. "But has he told Martha he's still alive?"

Oh, shit.

Kate stared at him and slowly shook her head.

"You might think about that, Katie. If you want to get through to him. I think the deepest wound he has is tied to that woman."

She nodded, her fingers flexing. "I'm almost certain she didn't give him up - or that it wasn't her own idea. Black. That man has. . .he did something, said something to her. Convinced her she couldn't do it alone, or threatened her even. I wouldn't put it past him."

"Rick needs to know," her father said slowly. "Start changing his thinking."

"Yeah," she breathed out, suddenly filled up the sense that this was actually _doable_. She could help him; he could stop defaulting to that lonely little boy when it came to his threatened relationships. "Dad, you're a genius."

"Glad to hear it," he chuckled. "Now eat your snack, Katie."

She glanced down to the crumbled crackers, the slices of cheese, and she felt her heart filled up with all the good ways love could manifest. The ways it healed.

Kate reached out and hooked her arms around her father's neck, breathed in the pine and soap scent of him.

"Love you, Dad."

"Love you too, sweetheart."

* * *

Castle listened to her on the phone with Carrie as he laid in bed, one hand playing with the ends of her hair as it shined at her back. She was sitting up, her knees curled up to her chin and picking at her toenails as she talked. Such a girly thing for her to do.

He was still flirting with sleep and it was early, so he just let Kate's words tumble over him, listening to the sounds of them rather than the content, their conversation mostly about the dog and how Kate was doing, her reassurances.

And then Kate jerked and he opened his eyes in a flash, saw her glancing at his phone with a little frown. She pushed her mouth back to the receiver and interrupted.

"Carrie, I gotta let you go. This - case. I'm sorry. Thank you so much for taking care of Sasha while I'm - while I work on this."

He had just pushed up onto one elbow when Kate ended the call and turned to him, holding the phone out.

"You got - a message."

He didn't like the look on her face, but he took the phone and read the memo in his email.

Castle growled and chucked the phone against the headboard, heard it clatter to the floor.

"Damn it."

"That mean what I think it did?" she asked quietly, her chin on one knee and her fingers coming out to brush at his shoulder.

"Black dismantled the JTF. Joint Task Force. On Bracken. Just fucking called it off."

"He can do that?"

"He can," Castle growled, sank onto his back with a groan. "Damn it all to hell."

"You know why he's done it, right?" she said and her hand was at his chest now, warm and weighted, a good reminder.

"Yes," he got out tightly. "He's recalling me. Because I broke cover and got you. Because I left the Office and am strolling around New York City in broad daylight."

"He's never going to stop doing this to you," she said, leaning over him now so that her face was right above his. "You keep coming when he calls, Castle."

"Not this time," he growled. "I mean - I knew we'd have to, at least sometime today. I figured we'd go back last night, honestly, but we were both tired. But not now."

She nodded slowly. "With the task force disbanded, what does that mean for the assassination?"

He lifted his hand to her bicep and stroked his thumb over the soft skin. "Oh, that's still on. That's the _point_. We're not investigating this guy anymore, Kate; we're taking him out. It's a subtle reminder of what I'm supposed to be doing. It's his way of saying, _Get your ass back here; we have work to do_."

"You're not killing him," she said.

He kept his mouth shut because they weren't going to agree on this point, and he liked the way she felt pressed against him, the soft and tickling touch of her hair at his chest.

"I'll think of a new way," she said quietly. "You're not killing him just because your father said-"

"It was my idea," he said on a shrug. "Way back - after you were shot. It was my idea to kill Bracken."

"You're not doing it," she insisted. "And we're not going back yet. You have to - we should see your mother."

"Also not high on priority list," he muttered, but her body was warm and he spread his fingers out at her back, tugged her closer.

But she resisted. "She was at your funeral, Rick. You didn't see the way she looked. To have found you only to lose you. . ."

She was withholding that soft mouth, using it instead to keep talking at him, her hand at his chest to give her leverage. So he did the only thing left to him.

"Fine. We'll go back to the city and find my mother. Now who's the bully? Hurry up and kiss me."

She grinned at that and leaned down finally, brushed her lips so tenderly over his that he'd promise her anything, anything at all, for that touch to go on and on. Always.

* * *

Castle paced the front porch of her father's cabin, anxious to be going, but Kate was on the phone, sitting on the swing and kicking him away with her foot when got too close.

If he was honest, it wasn't a good idea to parade himself through the city. He was asking for trouble.

But he wanted trouble. He wanted to flush Bracken out of cover and force him to make a move so that Castle could take him out. So he'd have an excuse to kill the man, something to ease Kate's conscience.

And he wanted to make his father pissed. Yeah, he could admit it. It wasn't mature, but Castle had spent so much of his adult life doing as he was told and he was done with it. He was finished.

He was thinking about quitting the CIA.

He wanted out. No more of this lifestyle, no more of this man who'd claimed to be a father but had always acted out of self-interest and cold calculation. Castle wanted his own life, his own _family_, and once Bracken had been dealt with, there was no reason to stick around.

Kate had called his mother from his secure CIA cell phone, and she pushed his face away with her hand as he tried once more to distract her. He didn't need to talk to Martha; she had nothing new to say to him. Nothing that could change the past or rewrite history.

He was done with both of them - his father and his mother. He didn't need either of them to start a new life with Kate. All he needed was Kate.

But Kate wanted him to see his mother.

So he was going to have to do that.

"In an hour," Kate said with relish, ending the call as she turned to him. "And don't _touch_ me while I'm on the phone with your mother."

He grinned and shrugged at her, reached out for her knee once more. "Last night we were in your father's guest bed and I didn't hear you complaining."

She gave him a look from under her eyebrows, but as he came closer and caught her hand, she traced their joined fingers up his abs. He sucked in a breath and caught her gaze, reached down and pulled her to her feet.

Kate came in for a kiss, a soft thing, perfect, and then she brought his hand to her mouth and kissed that too. "Ready to go?"

"No," he sighed. "But we should."

She shook her head at him and squeezed his hand. "Let me say good-bye to my dad."

He let her go and watched her walk back inside the house, the long and lean lines of her body disappearing through the door.

He had a bad feeling about this.

* * *

His phone rang when they were only a few blocks from the wine bar where they were to meet his mother. Beckett passed it over to him as she drove.

"Blocked number," she murmured, putting her hand back on the wheel.

CIA then. He answered with a clip to his voice, expecting his father.

But it was Jones, the CIA's assassination specialist who had told him to call him Smith. "Agent Castle, our timetable has moved up."

His guts clenched and he shot a sideways look to Beckett. "I'll be right there."

"No time. Meet me on the steps of the Met, soon as possible."

Central Park. He rubbed the wedding band still on his finger and took a breath. "All right. I'm close to there. Maybe fifteen, accounting for traffic."

The call dropped and Castle clenched his phone a little tighter, turned his head to Kate. But she'd already pressed her lips together, was at a red light waiting on his word.

"Central Park, Kate."

She gripped the steering wheel but only nodded. "Fine."

His chest ached. "I'll call her on the way. How about that?"

She nodded again, saying nothing, and he knew they were both making mistakes here, but he didn't know what to do to fix it.

"Call her right now, Castle. Where in Central Park?"

"The Met."

She sighed out slowly and he waited until the light turned green and she was turning the car around before he put the number into his phone.

* * *

The phone rang down the line and Castle flat-out panicked.

"You have to tell her. First. You have to-" He pushed the phone back to Kate even as she drove. "Kate. I can't just - surprise her."

Kate bit her bottom lip but she took the phone, pressed it against her ear. "I can't believe you're making me-"

She caught in a little breath as Martha must have answered and then Kate's eyes shot to his in an equal panic. She didn't know what to say either.

"I have to - cancel on you, Martha. I'm so sorry. I know I said it was important, but work - there's this case. But I wanted to tell you. Tell you what - what the news is."

She paused and he waited anxiously in the passenger seat, his guts churning, clenching the handle of the door rhythmically.

And suddenly Kate let out a bark of laughter, her cheeks flooding red and hot, and _what_?

She turned her eyes to him and looked away again, flushing even more, if that was even possible, and she kept opening her mouth as if to interrupt, but she was blushing crimson and not able to speak.

"What?" he hissed. What had his mother said to her?

"Martha!" she finally shouted, then groaned and shook her head. "I'm not pregnant. I'm sorry. I'm not - that's not it."

Castle huffed out a long, strangled breath, couldn't help the laugh that bubbled out at the end, couldn't help the sudden clear image of the future and the way Kate would tell him, and how-

She flicked his ear and he winced. "Ow, Beckett."

"No, Martha. No. I - I wanted to tell you this in person, but now because of this case, I can't. But. Richard isn't dead."

There was silence, a stillness to the air of the car even as it continued its course towards Central Park. Castle realized he was holding his breath and couldn't manage to make his lungs work even once he was aware of it.

"I'm sorry," Kate was saying, practically crooning into the phone. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know. Until yesterday. No. No, I'm - he's right here."

And then she handed the phone over to him with a look that could cut a man.

He took the phone.

* * *

She wasn't even trying to look like she wasn't blatantly eavesdropping. She was just blatantly eavesdropping. They were only a few blocks from Central Park and most of the conversation had been on Martha's end - and rather effusive and dramatic - but the woman's son was alive, of course she was being dramatic. Kate couldn't blame her the theatrics, especially over this.

She'd thought Kate was _pregnant_. Jeez. No. No, just - no. How terrible would that have been? To have Castle dead and-

And amazing. Like a gift. A last kiss.

Shit, she was going to cry.

No. Not here, not _now_, when he was sitting right beside her making promises to his mother.

"I will. As soon as Kate and I get this cleared up. Yes. It has to do with why I had to pretend in the first place. . ."

She turned to him and saw the grimace in his face, the half-panic.

"I can't tell you. Yes. Mar - uh. . .yes, I - okay." He scraped a hand down his face and she turned her eyes back to the road, felt her heart clenching in her chest.

"Castle," she murmured as they started to come up on Central Park. She could let him out or try to find parking somewhere. . .

He waved her on, still connected to the phone, so she kept going, hunting for a spot.

His mother had sounded close to breaking on the phone. Kate knew, from experience in the interrogation room, that a few pointed remarks, a soft question, and Martha would confess it all. She'd wanted to have that conversation today, give Castle something to hang on to, something to keep in mind as a weapon against his father, but that wasn't going to happen.

She heard Castle grunt next to her and looked over again to see him ending the call, staring at the phone.

"Rick?"

"She said. . .she loved me."

Kate's breath caught and she reached over, snagged his hand before she could second-guess the moment; she was rewarded with the clutch of his fingers.

There were all kinds of things she wanted to say, should say, but nothing came out. Instead she spotted a gap in the rows of cars and pulled into a space, parallel parking the Range Rover easily.

"What are we here for?" she asked him then, the silence muffling everything else.

"The plan," he said in a low voice. He wouldn't look at her. "Jones - our specialist - said the timetable had to be moved up."

"What does that mean?"

Castle was releasing her hand and pushing on the door. "I don't know, Kate. We'll have to see."

But she thought they both knew exactly what that meant.

Bracken was going to die and Kate was out of time.


	12. Chapter 12

**Close Encounters 6**

* * *

It was colder than Castle had expected and Kate was pressed into his back as he surveyed the front of the Met. Castle kept his eyes on the crowd at the wide, shallow steps of the museum, looking for Jones - and anyone else who might be tracking them.

He had to assume his father was having him followed.

Kate turned and came at his side, her arm to his, the sweatshirt jacket surely not doing enough to keep out the wind. "You okay?" he murmured.

She shivered but nodded. "Just cold. Nose is numb."

He reached for her elbow, tugged until her hand came out of her sweatshirt pocket, brought it into the warmth of his own coat. She wriggled her fingers against his and gave him a smile, cute and quick, so that all the shards of the past few days seemed finally to ease.

She didn't want to be here, she didn't want him doing this, but she wasn't against him. He needed that.

"Let me call Esposito again," she said, nudging closer.

"You just called him."

"But he might have something."

"He has our number, Beckett."

She huffed and knocked her shoulder into his side, and he laughed and cast a startled look her direction. She was glaring at him, somewhat amused, but behind it was a shimmer of desperation.

She really didn't want him to kill Bracken.

"Don't give up now," he murmured. Castle leaned over and dropped a kiss to that pressed-lip smile, seeing it for the mask it was. "Don't ever give up on me, Kate."

She made a noise against him and he felt the clutch of her hand, but at that moment, he saw Agent Jones coming up the steps. He released Kate's hand and moved towards the man, meeting him in the middle. Kate was at his back.

"Jones."

"Castle." A raised eyebrow as he took in Kate.

"This is Detective Beckett," he said briskly. "What's this about?"

Jones seemed to evaluate Beckett for a moment and then he widened his stance and crossed his arms. "The mayor's charity event. We've managed a spot on the catering crew - only one. And one of the lazy ass ex-cons I put away in a former life - he's the damn manager. So I can't do it."

"I can," Castle said without a moment's hesitation. He felt Beckett bristling at his side, but this wasn't negotiable. He was doing it.

"Fine, then you need me to brief you on delivery."

"I'm not going back to the Office," he said quickly. That too was non-negotiable. "I'm doing this one thing, and then I'm out."

"Out?" Kate said.

He shot her a look, shrugging her off with a _later_ in his eyes, and she frowned at him.

Jones resumed the conversation. "Fine. Delivery method is simple. And it's tomorrow, you do realize?"

Tomorrow. He'd - how had he let the time get away from him? "Yes. I realize. Tomorrow. Mayor's charity event."

"You need to report to Apple Catering by three o'clock this afternoon, New Guy. You start the event with them, but you leave with us-"

"Me," Kate interrupted. "He leaves with me. I'll be there. I'll take him in to work and take up a position-"

"No," Castle said, giving her a swift look.

But Jones stopped him. "Actually, that'd be best. The bastard knows my face; I can't hang around. But Beckett can."

No. No, she was _not-_

"And should the delivery mechanism fail, Beckett can partner you in Plan B."

Ah, well. Beckett wasn't going to assist him in murdering the senator, no matter what. So Plan A had better work. That meant he was spending the rest of the day mastering the delivery system for the chemical agent.

"All right, Public Library for the lesson?" he asked.

"Actually, if you don't mind the cold, let's find a spot in Central Park."

Castle cupped his hands together and blew on his stiff fingers; the Park wasn't ideal, but he'd make it work. If he didn't get this right, then Bracken would live.

Because he knew that if he gave Beckett enough time - she'd figure out a way to get the man off the hook.

And Castle couldn't have that.

* * *

An IV of N-acetylcysteine, also known as NAC, was used as a treatment for paracetamol or acetaminophen overdoses.

But Castle planned to use it to induce an anaphylactoid reaction in Senator Bracken. With an NAC infusion, the fatal allergic reaction to the drug included abdominal pain, cramps, vomiting, swelling, and difficulty breathing. It was the closing off of the air passages that caused shock, unconsciousness, and then death.

They'd tested samples of Bracken's blood in small doses only twelve hours ago, searching for the perfect combination. NAC had been a stroke of good fortune, since anaphylaxis only occurred in a low percentage of the population.

The infusion required that Castle stay at the mayor's charity event all night long, slowly administering the NAC with every course of the dinner.

Kate sat on the park bench as Castle practiced the maneuver. The senator would feel a pinch as Castle administered the numbing agent first, but after that, the man would never be able to tell he was being slowly poisoned.

By the time the first symptoms arose, the dinner would be mostly over and the speeches would be on, the senator trying not to attract attention, his tie strangling him a little, his body breaking out into a sweat.

"Castle," she said quietly.

He palmed the needle and worked at getting the tip off with his fingers.

"Castle, you can't do this."

He focused on the needle and thumbed off the cap, pleased with his success.

"Castle, you can't _inject_ him with poison. You'd never get close enough."

He turned to her, eyes narrowed. "I can do it."

"No," she hissed. "Listen to me. He knows your face. He will see you and he'll have you arrested."

"I can do this."

"Or worse - he'll just call his guys to get you. You can't do this, Castle."

"It's not a problem," he said calmly. "I'll change my appearance. Blend in. I've done it before."

"You're insane," she growled. "We can get him if we can put together that file. Just give me the time."

"That file is confetti. We don't have the time."

Agent Jones came back to the bench with a small case, popped it open. "Here's each injection. Smallest to largest," Jones said, touching the vials with his forefinger.

"Castle," she said urgently.

He took the case and placed the tip back on the needle. "Got it."

"The last one goes in at eight, not before."

"Got it," he said.

"Castle." She snagged his elbow and he glanced at her. "Just give me some time."

He wanted to; he really did. He'd do anything for her.

Except let this go on any longer.

"I'm sorry, Kate. I wish it could be different."

* * *

She argued with him in the drug store as he tried on black wire-framed glasses. He didn't answer her directly, continued to shrug her off, peering into the sliver of a mirror set into the display case.

"Castle, you're not Superman," she growled, snagging his arm when he refused to look at her.

"I know that," he said calmly. "But they change the shape of my face."

She'd never felt more panicked in her life. "Clark Kent wasn't fooling anyone. And neither will you. Up close and personal like that, he'll know you in a heartbeat."

"This is what has to be done."

"Get someone else to do it," she said on a whim. Her heart lifted. "That's it - just get someone else. It doesn't have to be you. Anyone on your team-"

"I can't ask someone else to do this. It's an act of treason, Beckett."

She groaned and pressed her hands hard into her eyes, tried to scrub out the frustration tightening around her like a noose. "Castle."

"Come on," he murmured. "I've got to buy these."

She felt the soft touch of his lips at her temple, like that would make it better, like that made it okay again.

And then he moved away.

* * *

He took the phone call from his father and she stood beside him on the sidewalk outside the drug store, listening intently even as her heart sank. But Castle was demanding autonomy from Black and reporting that he'd continue the mission tomorrow, as planned.

He had on those goofy black glasses, as if that was going to protect him. As if dressed as a catering staff waiter and wearing a pair of cheap black frames was going to keep Bracken from knowing exactly who he was.

"Come here," she muttered, even as he hung up the phone. She dragged him to the Range Rover and pushed him into the backseat and then she dug out the cosmetics she'd bought.

"What are you doing?" he muttered.

"Covering that fat bruise on your face," she sighed, untwisting the bottle of green concealer and squeezing some out.

"It's green, Beckett."

"Green hides red, Castle. Now let me do this. Can't go into that catering job looking like you got beat up. Nice normal people don't get punched in the face."

He was grinning at her, even though it had to hurt, and she just shook her head and applied the make-up, being careful around the worst of it. When he put the glasses on, it did actually help hide the touch-ups and discoloration. And the bruise made his face misshapen too, so maybe. . .

Beckett drove them to the address of Big Apple Catering and got out of the car even though she was parked in a tow away zone. She kissed him hard on the sidewalk, gripped his hand as if it might keep him.

But it wouldn't. He shook her off and disappeared inside the narrow doorway, walking away from her.

She felt sick, but she let him walk away from her. She wanted to run after him, but instead she got back into the Range Rover and drove the fifteen blocks south to meet the boys.

They'd pour over the file together and hopefully find something - anything - to make their case against Bracken.

Before Castle killed him tomorrow night. Before Castle got himself arrested for treason.

* * *

She had nothing. She had absolutely nothing.

"Come on, guys," she muttered, pacing the narrow length of the group study room. The public library had been their only recourse, and the file's confettied contents lay spread out over the wooden table.

Ryan picked at it with tweezers, a magnifying lens made out of reading glasses she'd bought at that corner drug store, while Esposito ran random items through search parameters on the laptop. It was Castle's laptop, and they were using his CIA resources to check, but so far they'd gotten nothing.

"What about those numbers?" she asked again.

"Beckett, I'm trying," Espo said hotly. "I'm searching every database he's got on here."

She paced back to the table and sank down, put her head in her hands. "He's going to try to kill him. Bracken knows exactly who he is; he's got no hope of pulling this off."

"Maybe the glasses will work," Ryan said hopefully.

Kate groaned. "And even if he does manage it, it's not like this is legal - at all. The CIA doesn't do ops on native soil. Black will have this to hang over his head for the rest of his life. I don't know why he doesn't _see_ that."

They'd never be free of the man.

"We'll find something," Ryan said quietly. "We will. We'll find _something_ in all of this."

Kate scraped a hand through her hair and picked another section of their puzzle, got back to work.

They had to find something. Anything.

She had to stop him.

* * *

Castle found himself with a thirty minute lunch break right before five o'clock. The paperwork was burning a hole in his pocket, but there wasn't enough time to call Beckett and have her pick him up.

So he did it alone.

He filed their marriage with the city clerk's office right before closing time and the woman behind the desk said the license would be in the mail. At the last minute, Castle had switched the mailing address to her father's, because with her apartment in ruins, and his not officially on the books, there was nowhere else to go.

They had to do something about that.

When this was finally over, they'd search for apartments and find a home, get a place they could both love, room to grow. Go get Sasha from Carrie's and really live their life together.

He called her phone on his way back to the catering company's offices, knowing he had two more hours of training left to go before they'd clear him to serve at the mayor's charity dinner tomorrow night. She answered in a rush, sounding distracted.

"I had a break," he started. "And I filed the paperwork."

"Oh," she said quietly. "For the marriage license."

"Yeah." Did she. . .not want him to?

"I thought you'd forgotten it," she said finally.

"Never."

He heard her slow exhale, like relief, and he'd thought she had understood what he had to do, but maybe she really didn't.

"Kate, when this is over? We can really be together. No more threats, no more running for our lives, no more hiding out. You'll be a detective again."

She sucked in a breath. "The cost is too high, Castle."

He shook his head and walked quickly through the last block. "No. It's not. I'll pay any cost to give us a real chance at this."

"Rick. Please."

He let out a frustrated breath and opened the door to the catering business. "I have to go. I can't - this is what has to be done."

He ended the call and shoved his phone back into his pocket; he had to put Kate out of his mind and concentrate on the mission.

* * *

"It's a bank account," Esposito called back.

Beckett snagged the chair right behind him and crowded in close to look at the laptop. "Okay, okay, finally. We're getting somewhere. Any info?"

"Nothing," he sighed.

Beckett scraped a hand through her hair and yanked on it. So close. They were so close. "What can we do about getting the name on that account?"

"Offshore, Beckett. We don't have-"

"But he does," she said quickly, reaching past Esposito for the computer. "Right? Castle has that access."

Ryan cleared his throat. "But we don't know how to do it. . .quietly. None of us are computer hackers."

"It's gotta be dummy proof though. Some kind of program." She started scrolling through the applications list, hoping it would stand out to her. Something labeled _hack into offshore bank records_ or something.

"Beckett," Esposito warned.

She jerked her head up and stared him down. "You don't understand. If he goes to that charity dinner, Bracken _will_ recognize him. He's dead. He's dead the moment he walks in there."

Ryan sighed loudly and plucked the computer out of her fingers. "I might know a way."

"Ryan," she choked out. She knew she sounded desperate. And she was. She was desperate. This had to work.

"If we can get the information," Ryan said quietly. "You know we can't do anything about it. It's not legal, so it won't hold up in court. We'd have to use this to connect him to something else, but we could never explain _how_, Beckett."

"I'll think of something," she promised.

But she didn't know _what_.

She had a terrible feeling that Bracken was beyond the reach of the law.

* * *

"Shit," Ryan barked.

"What?" Beckett jerked upright and leaned in over his shoulder.

"No, no. Nothing. I keep getting these alerts. The window pops up to tell me something that I guess is going to Castle's phone? It says redirect. I don't know. And every time it pops me off the program so I can address the alert, but it scares the shit out of me - makes me think I did something wrong."

"What are you talking about?" she said crossly, rubbing at her forehead.

"Mission alerts. I don't know. Like this last one, look."

He was hovering the mouse over the bubble at the bottom of the screen and she read _Subject arrives at 5:46 pm. Fundraiser. Subject proceeds to Plaza Terrace._

Kate felt her breath catch. "Bracken. That's the subject."

"Oh, right. Makes sense," Ryan said. "He's getting field reports on Bracken's status."

"These government groups like to have everything planned down to the last detail," Esposito commented. He was still hunched over the file's pieces trying to come up with something else. "Like the military. So yeah, they're gonna know everything that happens to this guy."

But Beckett wasn't listening. Bracken was at the Plaza Hotel right now, a very public place, for a fundraiser. And Black had eyes on him, all over him apparently. Would it be any different at the charity dinner tomorrow?

Black would know and probably be recording every single move Castle made. She didn't like that at all; the power he held over them was too much, too great. It was evidence.

"Guys, I'm gonna head down the street. Get a snack. You mind?"

Esposito jerked his head up and studied her for a minute. "Naw. Go ahead."

"Get me some coffee?" Ryan asked, half turning from the laptop to look at her. They'd gotten only a couple layers down from the shell company that owned the bank account, and Ryan was going slowly.

"Coffee," she said with a nod.

And then she left.

* * *

Castle grunted when his phone buzzed in his pocket, held a finger up to the man trying to explain serving on the left and clearing on the right. The manager looked pissed but Castle had to take this; no doubt it would be Jones or his father with an update.

He stepped back and pulled out his phone, answered without looking. "Castle."

"Hey, man, it's Esposito."

"Espo," he said tightly. "I can't talk right now."

"Yeah, you can. Because Beckett is missing."

"What?" he barked. The wait staff who were rolling silverware into elegant cloth napkins all stared at him. "What do you mean she's missing?"

The manager raised an eyebrow and Castle turned his back on them.

"She stepped out for a minute. A break. Said she was getting coffee."

"And?" he prompted.

"And that was forty minutes ago."

"_Forty minutes_ ago?" He was going to throttle Esposito. "There's still a contract out on her _life_, man. Bracken could've gotten to her. Why did you let her leave without one of you-"

"Listen man, I'm telling you now. We've looked up and down the block for her, but no one remembers her. She didn't buy anything at the convenience store."

"If he got her-"

"I don't think that's it," Espo said quickly. "I think she went after him herself."

His stomach dropped. "What do you mean?"

"Right before she said she needed a break, we were on your laptop. You keep getting these alerts on Bracken. She - she was interested."

Alerts on Bracken. The surveillance team's updates? "She saw those."

"Yeah. Plaza Hotel for a fundraiser. It's only-"

"I know where it is," he ground out. "Why would she do this?"

"We have some information, but it's not complete. Nothing to pin him with legally. It's starting to look like we won't get anything before your deadline."

"Would she. . .she wouldn't do it herself, would she?" Kill him.

There was an uncomfortable silence on the other end and Castle thought back to what he'd seen of Beckett when she was on this case, how determined, how it swallowed her up.

"She might do it," he sighed. "She'd do it. Shit. Beckett."

* * *

He called her and the phone went straight to voicemail. He'd ditched the catering service as quickly as possible, hoping to salvage the mission at a later date, but he wasn't sure. It might all be for nothing.

He still had the vials of NAC on him; if it came down to it, he could do it there, at the fundraiser. But the Plaza was pretty secure and the security guys on duty weren't agents that Castle's team had vetted. Still he might be able to pull something off.

Beckett could _not_, under any circumstances, do it herself.

The Plaza was at the south end of Central Park and he was at the north end, so he hailed a cab the moment one came up empty. He smacked his ID into the dividing window and asked the guy to get creative.

Beckett could not kill Bracken.

He called her again, and again it went to voicemail.

What the hell was she thinking?

* * *

When she got to the lobby of the Plaza, she recognized the NYPD officers who maintained the perimeter and her heart lifted. She stepped past the line waiting to go through the metal detectors and avoided the crowd.

"Hastings," she called out, nodding towards the cluster of reporters and hangers-on who where grouped around Bracken and following him back to the ballroom. "I need a word with the senator."

Hastings hesitated; she had to know that Beckett was no longer with the precinct.

"You know I've been working with the government. It's about a threat on his life," she added in a low undertone.

"Threat?" Hastings murmured, jerking her head back towards Bracken.

"Hastings, I need to talk to him."

"Of course, Detective Beckett," Hastings said and unhooked the rope to allow Kate through.

She strode purposefully across the lobby, the plush carpet eating up all sound of her approach, and when she arrived at the knot of people, she pushed right through and into the ballroom. Her hand was damp in her pocket as she made her way carefully, keeping her head down, and then she was right in the tightest group around the senator.

She was right there.

She slipped the burner phone into his pocket - the one she'd just bought at the convenience store down the block - and she kept on going, making it to the stairs and up to the balcony with her hands shaking. His security detail had never even seen her.

Beckett pulled out the CIA's secure phone, untraceable, and she called the number of the burner, watching Bracken as he made nice with the crowd.

He froze when the ringtone went off, that innocent trill that sounded like the jangle of a real phone, and then his hand went into the pocket of his suit jacket.

He stepped away from the crowd with a raised finger to his campaign manager.

"Hello?" The confusion, the apprehension in his voice was something she'd relish.

"This is Kate Beckett. The woman you tried to kill."

Bracken's head jerked up and his nostrils flared.

"I see you know the name," she said quietly.

He spun on his heel, scanning the crowd.

"That's right, senator. I'm watching you right now."

"I don't know what this is about," Bracken said icily. "But I am not interested in playing games."

"A contract out on my life, on a CIA agent's life - that's not a game to me either. And I'm not playing around. I have information that can destroy your career."

She saw him hunch his shoulders infinitesimally but he said nothing more.

"I will use that information, senator, and I will bury you. Unless you do exactly what I say."


	13. Chapter 13

**Close Encounters 6**

* * *

"That's far enough," Beckett said coldly. The gun was steady in her hand. She'd taken one of Castle's own - an unmarked piece, no numbers - just in case.

Bracken was keeping whatever he felt very close. "What is it you want, Ms Beckett?"

The kitchen was dark; the fundraiser was a meet and greet only. No need for caterers, no possible chances for injections or food poisoning. She had to end this here.

"What I want is the truth," she croaked out, felt the shimmer of her anger waking once more. She'd come here to end it, to finally end it, but she felt the dark hole of her life opening up once more. "I want you to admit what you've done. Raglan, McCallister, Montgomery. My mother."

"Don't think you'll ever get the truth out of a politician," he laughed. "But you should already know what it feels like to be given a cover story, right? You and your CIA boyfriend."

Her heart thundered in her head, but the gun was steady. "You had my mother killed-"

"I'm just a guy trying to do right, trying to do great things for this city. Just as you've done great things. When I was a teenager, I found one of my friends dead in his apartment - his mother had killed him and his sister, then hanged herself. She'd left a note: she'd lost her job, was being evicted, she couldn't keep the family together-"

"What the fuck does this have to do with anything?" she growled, stepping closer in her fury. That calculated look came to Bracken's eyes and she halted, realized he was playing her for time.

"I knew then I wanted to make people's lives better. People just like her, who were so desperate and at the end of their rope that they felt like death was their only option. I've created jobs in this city, I've started work programs in those same neighborhoods where my friend was murdered by his own mother."

"Are you justifying yourself to me?" she hissed, realized she had started forward once more. She took a breath and fought hard to resist the impulse to go ahead and do it, murder him right here. "My mother was _stabbed_. In an alley. On your order. She bled to death on a pile of garbage. So save the campaign speech about the great things you've done."

Bracken had his hands carefully out, like he was placating her, and it occurred to her just then that Bracken was waiting for someone to come upon them, find them like this, that she looked crazy and wild-eyed while he seemed serene and in control.

"You seem a little unhinged there, Ms Beckett. And who are you, anyway? A disgraced former-detective who has been known to spiral uncontrollably into your mother's case."

"You put out a _contract_ on our lives."

"So you say. I'm the Senator from New York. I'm the one who's always looking out for the little guy, who's built playgrounds in vacant lots and required landlords to get their tenements up to code. That's who the public sees. That's what they'll see if you come at me."

"I have the power here. And I have a demand - you recall your order to have us killed."

"Take it back?" he laughed. "Are we children on a playground? Not going to happen, Ms Beckett. I won't let you or anyone else get in my way."

"You're in no position to threaten me," she said coldly, backing up another step as she regained her purpose.

"I'm in the perfect position," he smiled.

She narrowed her eyes, quickly scanned the exits once more. She had the gun here, she had to remain in control. She didn't know how much time she'd have before the guys on surveillance noticed Bracken was gone.

"It's not about who has the gun, Ms Beckett. Clearly you've underestimated-"

"Before you start making speeches again," she said, taking a long breath in to find her center. "Maybe you should hear what I have to say. The CIA has a plan in place to take you out, Senator. I believe you've made a very nasty enemy over there."

Bracken shut his mouth.

She smirked. "Do I have your attention?"

"You _do_ have a gun pointed at me," he said calmly.

"What I'm proposing is a trade. I'll call off the CIA when you cancel the contract on our lives."

"Yours and your boyfriend's."

"He will kill you," she said slowly. "My boyfriend? He will make it painful and he will enjoy it. He's a CIA agent, Senator. You think he can't kill you a hundred different ways and never be caught? Now imagine the people and resources he has behind him. More than that. Imagine the very pissed off man whose appointment you're blocking."

Bracken folded his arms over his chest and studied her. "Contract for contract." He gave her a half-curled smile and her guts churned at the damn _confidence_ on his face. "I don't think so. CIA doesn't have authority on US soil, and you just gave me the names of those who are threatening a US Senator's life. You have no power here, Ms Beckett. I suggest you run along."

Bracken turned his back on her, like she was nothing, and she steadied her stance and called out to him.

"I have the file."

Bracken paused.

"Smith had another copy."

Bracken turned slowly towards her.

"Bank account number 0862241. You deposit your money orders there, for your contract killers. So you're right. It's not about who's holding the gun. It's about who has the power. And right now, I could release the file and destroy you."

His hands clenched into fists, but she wasn't even close to being finished.

"But what does that mean for my life expectancy? Or my boyfriend's? So here's what's going to happen. The deal you had with Smith - that's our deal now."

Bracken's lips curled.

She shook her head shortly. "But anything happens to me, or anyone I care about, the file goes public. And if you think I mean the media, you're mistaken. The CIA and the FBI and the Secret Service's Joint Task Force gets the full copy, and they come after you. Hard. Am I clear?"

She could see the glitter of calculation in his eyes as he tried to come up with a loophole. But she'd gone over it and over it all evening, planned it as she'd traveled here.

"That's a yes or no question, Senator."

Bracken ground his teeth and his fists released. "Yes."

"Let's make sure you have it," she said carefully. "Tell it back to me."

"The contracts are cancelled. You're protected so long as that file doesn't see the light of day. Or any secret agencies."

She brought the weapon down and stepped closer now, glad for the way he studied her like he didn't know what came next. "Me and those I care about. My father, my team, Richard Castle. Everyone on my side."

"I got it," he groused out, eyes flint-like and cold. "You just stay on your side, you hear me?"

"One more thing," she said quietly, steel in her voice. "Whatever you think of me, whoever you think I am, you have no idea. Obsessed? You don't know the half of it. And now I've a whole army on my side, Senator. It's your turn to be afraid."

She felt the burn of the scar at her back, the way it still pulled and stretched, the way her chest was tight in the cold. And then she felt the heft of the gun in her hand and she raised it, let him see it coming.

She pistol whipped him with the butt of her gun, same spot Esposito had punched Castle.

He held his hand to his cheek and she saw the blood glistening.

"That's gonna leave a scar. Every time you see it, think of me."

And then she headed back through the bowels of the kitchen, her blood making her body pulse and jerk, alive with the thrill of getting him back - even that, even one superficial wound.

She wasn't done. This wasn't over.

But for now-

* * *

"I'm sorry, Agent Castle. You have to check your sidearm."

He let out a growl and scraped his hand down his jaw. "Look, two NYPD detectives are following. They'll be here in minutes. But I don't have that time. I have to get to the senator."

Before Beckett killed him.

"Sir. I'm sorry. You're not on the approved list."

What was _with_ this woman? "Esposito and Ryan are right behind me. I swear."

But she was reolsute.

"Fine," he growled. She flinched, but he only snapped open his holster and tugged the weapon out. Castle grabbed her hand and slapped his gun into her palm. "Now, I've got to get to the senator. It's a matter of life and death."

"Detective Beckett is already-"

He was three strides away from her but he jerked back at the mention of Kate's name. "Beckett is here. You let her through?"

The officer nodded.

"You see where-"

"The ballroom was the last I saw her."

Castle made a beeline for the back ballroom, following her pointing finger, and darted through the crowd, elbowing people out of his way. He tried to be subtle, but fuck subtle, he could _not_ let Beckett kill the senator.

He'd fucking stand in front of the man if that's what it took.

Castle scanned the busy room, the noise and chatter crackling through him like static. The front podium was empty and the chairs behind it were filled but for one. No Bracken.

Fuck. Fuck, she could _not_ have killed him.

She wouldn't, right? She wouldn't kill him. She'd been so damn-

There he was. Bracken. Hustled out from what looked like a back hallway, a fresh butterfly bandage over one cheek. Ice was in one hand but he was being led so quickly by his security team and handlers that he had no time to use it.

And then they were opening a back door and pushing right through.

Oh, God.

What had Kate done? What had Bracken done to her?

He made for that back hallway at a run.

* * *

When she rounded the corner of a back hall and was out of sight, Beckett fell back against the wall and let out a shaky breath, closing her eyes. Shit. She'd hit him. He deserved it but still.

She'd been waiting for this day since her mother's murder thirteen years ago, and even if it hadn't been the way she'd dreamed it, it was huge. It was. . .she wished Castle had been there.

"Detective Beckett."

Kate jerked upright at the new voice, her heart tumbling. She turned her head and there in the red light of the exit was Agent Black.

"Drop your weapon," Agent Black said coldly and she saw the Sig pointed at her heart.

She slowly lowered her gun to the floor, mouth dry.

"Kick it to one side."

Fuck. Kate tapped it with her shoe and heard it skitter entirely too far away.

She should've known it would come to this.

"You just can't be contained," Black said, his eyes dead. "You've corrupted my son, and now you've destroyed everything I've sought after for the last forty years. I'm done working around you."

He pushed open the exit door and jerked his head for her to follow.

"Time to end this, Beckett."


	14. Chapter 14

** Close Encounters 6**

* * *

Beckett's knees crunched into broken glass, grinding.

Chain link fence. Endless brick. The grit of dress shoes turning in the alley behind her.

His father was going to kill her.

She would never have done anything different. Not a moment. Not a breath.

Castle.

If it was always going to come to this, she'd have fought for him in any city or country or plane of existence. In any universe, even if it always was going to come to this moment here in an alley on her knees with a gun to her head - she was always going to love him.

Kate Beckett closed her eyes.

She was always going to love him.

* * *

Castle skidded to a halt when he got to the kitchens, saw the bloodied towel on one stainless steel countertop. From Bracken's face? Or more. He had no idea.

Had Bracken killed her? Had-

He heard the slam of an exit door farther back and he took off through the winding, dark twists of the bowels of the kitchen, searching for the origin of that sound.

Were Bracken's fucking goons dragging her body out right now?

Castle's hands clenched and he saw the eerie red light of a side exit. He hurried forward and paused only a moment. He didn't know the situation, had no idea how many of them there were.

_Fuck it._

He slammed into the sidebar and as the door popped open, the arc of its swing revealed the back alley and Kate Beckett in its path. On her knees.

On her knees.

And then the open door reached its widest point and he saw the man. And the gun pointed at the back of her head.

His father.

* * *

"_No!"_

Rick slammed into Black and drove him into the ground. The gun went off even as Castle bashed Black's fist into the pavement, slammed his hand into the crumbling curb and drove his head back. A knee to the older man's sternum, pressing deep, a left-handed hook that snapped his chin up and pushed a groan out of his mouth.

The gun clattered out and away. The crunch of bone under the heel of Castle's hand, the crack of his knuckles into the rigidly giving flesh of the man's face. The whistle and bubble of blood through the mangled bits of mouth and nose.

His name. Being called. Hands, the brutal grip of a slender, tensile arm around his chest and prying his fist back.

And then he heard the screaming.

And he knew it was him.

* * *

She sucked in a breath and dropped, instinctively, only to feel the ricochet bite brick into her cheek and neck. She heard the animalistic grinding of an attack, the metal slam of the exit door, and she turned raggedly to find her boys standing in the alley, staring.

Beckett twisted back around and saw him.

"Castle!"

She lunged forward and threw herself over his back, an arm curled at his shoulder, the other going for his forearm, and she caught a glimpse of the bloodied man below him, felt her stomach turn over.

"Help me!" she growled over her shoulder, getting to her feet now and heaving backwards. The rage was ripping from his chest; she could feel it as it tore through, and then the boys were prying him off Black, and she was breathless with the weight of Castle and trying to keep them upright._  
_

Black was cursing in a bubble of blood and getting to his feet.

"Oh, God," Ryan swore and the three of them stumbled back even as Castle stood swaying, alone, facing his father.

And then Black collapsed.

* * *

Castle watched his father go down and he stood there and he did nothing.

Esposito and Ryan were all over Black and then calling in paramedics, that near-panic in Ryan's voice that somehow always amused Castle and he felt the twitch of his lips upward into a smile and then Kate Beckett slapped him.

He rocked on his heels and his back hit the brick and he blinked at her.

And everything rushed in.

"Oh, God," he groaned, reaching for her and catching her up against him in a crush of his arms.

She panted at his neck and he felt her too-hard beating heart and the slick heat of blood and the pulse of agony in his fists.

"Oh God, what did he do to you?" he rasped.

"Castle, Castle, baby. I have to get you out of here. Both of us have to leave. Espo and Ryan had to call the paramedics but _we have to go_."

"Kate, God please - you're bleeding."

"It's nothing," she hissed fiercely, pushing on him to let go of her but he could never - he could never let her go now. Never.

"Kate," he whispered, and his fingers skimmed through her blood at her neck in horror.

"Brick - just the brick. A scratch. We have to go. Do you hear me, Castle? We have to go."

He stared at the ribbon of red that wound around his fingers and down her collarbones and disappeared under her shirt.

"Rick, baby, please. Please stay with me. You're going into shock, and I need you. I need you."

His eyes snapped up to see the _begging_ on her face and it wasn't the beautiful, ecstatic, frustrated one he loved to see under him when her wrists were bound to the headboard and her-

"_Castle_."

He jerked to attention, felt the jagged pieces of his brain snap together once more, his vision bright and clear and the world in order.

Black was splayed in the street lamp's glow; he was unconscious and glaringly bloodied, most likely near death. His father was near death, the boys shrouding him, Ryan had started chest compressions. Kate had a brutal grip on his arm and was propelling him back through the exit door and into the kitchen and the plunge into darkness made his body spin and falter.

"Castle."

He scraped a hand down his face and shut it off.

"Exit," he said harshly.

"Back this way," she breathed out, clutching his hand and dragging him at first. And then his feet obeyed and he was running at her side as they burrowed deeper into the hotel's service halls and finally, finally to a stairwell.

She shoved him up two flights and then they came out onto a richly carpeted hall and he found he was shaking so badly he couldn't push the elevator button. She took over for him and then turned and flinched.

"Rick."

He knew he looked bad; he felt like he was going to be sick.

She cupped his cheeks and stroked her thumbs under his eyes and it was then he realized he was crying.

* * *

Kate gripped his hand harder even though she could feel his swollen knuckles grind together beneath her fingers. He breathed too loudly as they walked through the front doors of the Plaza and out onto the sidewalk; his ragged wheeze made her mouth dry. He had on those black frame glasses; she'd found them in his coat pocket and figured what the hell.

Seemed to help.

The make-up around his bruised cheek was starting to run and the green concealer was shining through sickly. His hand was hot under hers and she needed to get him somewhere she could tend to him.

He was going into shock.

She found a clear spot at the curb and hailed a cab, startled back when the taxi pulled right up like providence. Castle stumbled at her movement and she reached for him, hooked her arm through his even as she opened the back door.

She had a twenty on her; Castle had. . .wow. A lot of cash. A whole lot of cash. Okay.

She gave the man an address.

Kate didn't know if it was right, but it was the only place she knew to go.

* * *

The dog greeted them first; Sasha's tail whipped back and forth as she bounded up against them, not jumping but knocking her whole body into Castle even as Beckett tried to steer him towards the back porch.

Carrie was just coming down the steps and the taxi was turning around in a cloud of dust as gravel pinged off the undercarriage. Castle swayed at her side because of the dog - the dogs now, both - and she struggled to keep them both upright.

She was going to fall apart. Soon. She was going to lose it if she couldn't get him somewhere finally safe.

"Kate," the woman gasped when she approached. "You're bleeding. What-"

"Can we crash here?" she asked in a breathless rush. She felt like she was going pass out and only now did she realize it might be blood loss.

"Kate," Castle said slowly, and his hand was at her elbow and her neck, and then-

Oh.

Oh, she was fading to black.

She had already faded to black.

* * *

He caught her in the driveway before she could hit her head, barely, and he struggled to get his feet under him and pick her up.

Carrie went on ahead, leading him through the back porch while Sasha nipped at the other dog and kept him back, away from Castle's feet.

"Good girl," he breathed out, his arms shaking as he clutched Kate tighter. Carrie nodded to the living room and he cracked one knee as he went down, controlling his descent at least. Beckett was already coming around; she pressed a hand to her mouth and he hunched over her, trying to look at the blood streaming down her neck.

"What-" she croaked.

"You passed out."

"The hell you say," she grunted.

He let out a huff of laughter and dipped his forehead to hers, felt his body giving it up. "Kate," he sighed. "I don't know that I can do this anymore."

Her arm wound around his neck and she kept him there, the two of them breathing, caught up in it. Until Carrie interrupted with an ice pack over his knuckles and another on his face that made him yelp.

Kate was struggling to sit up but he and Carrie both held her down; Eastman's wife was already washing off the blood from Kate's neck with a paper towel, blotting at it as the jagged edges of her skin were revealed.

"What did this?" Carrie murmured quietly. "And Richard - you beat up the guy who did it to her?"

"Yes," he said.

Kate pressed her hand over her eyes. He took it as his cue to man up and get his shit together, be what she needed now that she'd gotten him this far.

"My father," he said then, and the confession felt both hollow and weighty at the same time. "He was going to kill her."

The air left Kate in a rush and he saw her press her fingers into her eyes. Castle slid up onto the couch, his body aching and popping, and he curled his arm under her head and brought her into his lap. Carrie crouched on the floor and pressed gauze to the wound, but the blood was already starting to slow.

He stroked his fingers through Kate's hair, brushing it back from her forehead and temples, over and over, needing something to do. His other hand was weighted down by the ice pack, while the one that had been pressed to his cheek was left melting on the couch cushion.

He was back now. He really didn't have injuries but for his hand, a bruised spot on his jaw and another at his ribs. Aches. A good fist fight.

But he'd beat-

She lowered her hand from her face, took in a long breath.

"Kate?"

She opened her eyes. That clear-lake green, like the best times at her father's cabin with the spring sunlight warming them, side by side on the dock.

She took in another breath, deeper, calmer.

He skimmed her cheekbone. "Don't ever do that again without me."

She nodded and her hand came up stroke the back of her fingers against his stomach. He caught her hand and squeezed.

"I'm okay," she said finally, and she slowly sat up.

The bleeding had stopped.

* * *

Carrie kept the television on, but there'd been no breaking news, so Kate insisted on calling her team. She still had the burner phone in the pocket of her jacket so she pressed it to her ear with her shoulder and kept the bandage against her neck with her other hand.

Castle was in the bathroom, cleaning up. She knew he'd thrown up once, but he'd shaken her off and she'd taken the hint.

Carrie stood at the window and watched the dogs, and the gravel drive, and Kate made her phone call.

"12th Pre-"

"Ryan, it's me."

"You guys okay? Castle all right?"

"He's fine," she said quickly. They'd left the dogs outside because she and Carrie hadn't been to wrestle Sasha away from him. "What's the situation?"

"Black's at New York Presbyterian. A phalanx of CIA guys are crawling all over him, but they don't know who or what. Espo and I gave out the idea that it was something to do with a mission gone wrong. We didn't know what else to say."

She bit her lip and rubbed at her forehead, tried to figure out a good enough story for the CIA to swallow. They had to get back; there was no time to recover in peace. No time to take stock and figure out where they were after all of this.

No time to dwell on the alley and the gun at her head and the cold and clear distinction of her life before and after him. If he couldn't-

"It'll have to come from Castle," she said finally. "He'll think of something to tell them. For now, you guys say you arrived on the scene and found him as is. Bracken already gone."

"Got it, boss."

"We'll probably head to the hospital and coordinate with whoever is running that show. Put out an official story before Black wakes."

"Oh, he's been awake a couple times now. He's in stable condition."

Shit, that man was relentless.

"Okay," she said slowly. "All right. We'll have to do some damage control before he can start telling stories."

"He was going to kill-"

"Yes," she cut him off. "He was. So I have no idea what he hopes to accomplish, what his next move will be. Make sure you guys stick close, will you?"

"We will. Esposito is down there now; Gates has - no idea what's going on, Beckett, but she knows there's something."

"Don't get in trouble," she said weakly, but she knew they would. For her. The things they did for her.

Ryan didn't even bother to dignify that with a response.

"I'll text you when we're on our way," she sighed, and then she heard the bathroom door opening.

She turned around to give him the news.

* * *

Castle gripped the door frame at the look on her face and felt the wood digging under his nails. Carrie had disappeared back into the kitchen, but Kate was looking at him like - like the worst.

"Stable condition at Pres," she said quietly.

Fuck.

Castle swayed in the heat of the bathroom and let his shoulder take the brunt of his weight, tilting his chin up. He'd cried like a fucking idiot in the shower and he wasn't going back there.

Live or die. Live or die. He didn't know what was better. He wanted the bastard dead, cold dead, brutally dead.

But it tangled up in him and made his ribs into blades with every breath.

He wished he knew what to say to her. He wished he knew what _fixed_ having your father put a gun to your wife's head with the complete and final intent of ending her for good. Forever.

For life.

And then Kate was there, pressed up against him, his damp chest ruining her shirt - oh, well the blood had already - fuck, she was - she had to shower or something because he couldn't stand here and take this, smelling her blood on her and knowing how close it had been.

"Just tell me we're okay," she said tightly. "Tell me we're okay, Castle, and everything will be fine."

"Me?" he rasped, felt his arms clutch around her shoulders. "Me? I - what about you?"

She had her face pressed against his neck and her fingers were digging hard into his bare shoulders, her nails piercing his skin. "Tell me. Tell me we're okay."

"We're okay," he said automatically. "We're okay. We're okay, I swear."

She choked something out into his skin and he felt the claw of her nails as if to draw him tighter, as if to break him open and dig her way inside, and he was so fucking okay with that - let him bleed. Let him be gutted open and fit around her like a second skin.

Fuck, he was morbid. Everything was twisted in a way that wouldn't untwist.

"Kiss me," she groaned and her teeth were at the cords of his neck like a vampire, sucking, her moan barely held back.

He gripped her hair in his fist and shoved his mouth to hers, bit her tongue as she battled for more, groaned into a long and panicky attempt at easing them both, but it didn't work.

She had him up against the door and her booted foot locked around his bare leg, her heel wicked at his calf, and he growled and hoisted her up, slammed the door shut and dropped her on the bathroom counter.

She was glittering and dangerous with grief and he wanted to _maul_-

"Don't stop loving me," she choked out.

Fuck.

Fuck, he had to do this right. He couldn't just take. He had to make her know, make her certain of him, of them. He cupped her cheek and leaned his forehead against hers and breathed.

"I love you," he murmured. "I love you, I love you. Nothing will ever break us."

He breathed it out with every exhale and soon she breathed it with him, that love, and then she was slumping into him like she had no bones left to hold her up, and he cradled the back of her head in his hand and held her while she cried.

* * *

Kate shivered and watched his eyes as he stroked the hair back from her face, the water running down her cheek and bringing up goose bumps.

His eyes always gave him away. And his were calm.

She found it easier to breathe, easier to assert some sense of her own personhood again, to crawl back out of that alley and stand on her feet once more. But she didn't move a muscle; she just watched him clean the blood off her skin.

The bathroom sink was cold under her ass, and she had to counterbalance with her foot pressed into the cabinets below, but he had one hand at her hip to hold her in place while he washed her skin.

The cloth was soft, the slide of soap along the slope of her shoulder made her breath catch. He used a corner of the washcloth to rub under her chin and she lifted her head a little and found herself staring at his temple and the wet spike of his hair.

She pried her fingers off the edge of the counter and lifted her hand to stroke through the short strands, curl at his ear. He tilted his head to shake her off and she dropped her palm to his shoulder.

He'd pulled her shirt off of her and nudged down the straps of her bra when he'd started and now he teased the edge of her clavicles with the warm soap and water, brushed down the valley of her breasts.

She felt the smile floating to the surface of her mouth, let it come as she gauged his own reaction in the silver mercury of his gaze.

"It's pink," he murmured and his eyes lifted to hers.

"Pink?"

"Running pink. Almost clean."

Oh, the blood. She glanced down and sighed. At least her bra was black; the blood stains wouldn't be that noticeable. She didn't have much clothing and his place was probably off limits, since it was wired, and she felt her chest tightening but he suddenly pressed down hard over her heart.

"Don't think about it right now," he said.

She lifted her eyes to him and the pressure eased. "Yeah. Good idea."

"Dr King would probably disagree," he added. "But maybe just until both of us can get back to see him, huh?"

She let out a startled laugh, like a bird taking flight from a bush, and she leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his bare shoulders, pressing skin to skin, her bra straps restricting her movements.

He embraced her, slipped his hand down her spine and over the bullet scar, and then he was easing her bra apart. She huffed and lifted her head to see how pleased he was with himself, and she let him take the bra off of her.

"Maybe you should take a shower too," he said, his head ducking down to trail a kiss like fire along her jaw. "Hm? I don't think I can get it all with just the washcloth."

"Oh, really? I thought you were doing a great job."

"Play along, Beckett. I want to see you naked."

She hummed and reached between him for the button of his jeans. "You first."

* * *

"Hey there, Chuck Norris," she said softly.

He lifted his eyes to hers and gave her back a smile, something more genuine this time, something she could hold on to. Kate wrapped his hand slowly in gauze from Carrie's first aid kit, wearing nothing more than a towel as the bathroom's steam slowly dissipated around them.

"Chuck Norris wishes he were me," Castle said then.

She laughed at that, a relieved thing that seemed to do the last of it for her. They'd be okay. They were already okay. This wouldn't come between them.

"Tell me about Bracken," he said softly.

She nodded and kept a gentle touch on his poor hand, the battered and split knuckles, the still swollen fingers. Bracken seemed so far removed now, such a minor inconvenience after everything that had followed.

"I confronted him. I told him we had the file and that if he kept coming after us, I'd let the CIA do whatever they wanted to him."

"Really?"

She tucked the last of the gauze into his bandage and leaned over to kiss his fingertips. She felt his hand flex and the skimming touch along her jaw, and then he was lifting her chin to look at her.

"Kate."

"I can't have you killing people for me."

It was the closest she was going to come to speaking about any of what had happened, and he knew it; she saw that he knew it. She didn't want him to have to carry that, didn't want him to put himself at risk for that. There were other ways.

"I had to come up with another option," she said finally. "You seem to have two ways of dealing with people. If they're a threat to the mission, eliminate them. If they're not, then work around them - ignore them. It's on or off with you guys."

And then she flushed, realized that she'd just inadvertently lumped Castle in with his father. That's exactly what Black had done to her - she'd become a threat, and he'd moved to eliminate it.

She swallowed and kept hold of his hand, drew him closer. "I'm talking about Bracken. Okay? This is only about Bracken. We won't touch on - any of that now."

He nodded tightly, and she saw the narrowness of his eyes ease a little.

"Your training tells you there's no other option, Castle. But mine tells me there's always something else. Another story to tell, a different way of looking at things. I guess it comes from having to look for someone's motive for murder. That there's a reason. And so I needed to come up with a reason - another option."

"What did you do to him? His face was bruised."

"I hit him with the butt of my weapon," she admitted. "A way to - make him keep his word. Show him I wasn't. . .I did it for my mother."

His fingers flexed at her neck and skimmed the bandage. "And then?"

"And then we came to a deal. He leaves us alone, he doesn't come after me or the people I love. And I keep him alive. If he doesn't abide by it - then I let the CIA rain down on him and I leak the file and it all goes to shit."

He sighed. "Mutually assured destruction."

She shrugged.

"You do know that's insane, right? It can never last."

"Worked in the Cold War."

"I'm not looking for a Cold War, Beckett. Deterrence and appeasement don't work with evil dictators. I want freedom."

She shivered and pushed her body into his. "But we live in the real world. It was the best I could do, Rick. You'll have to live with a truce."

She held her breath, but he didn't disappoint. Castle wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck, tighter and tighter.

"No, I know. I know, Kate. I just wanted to finally be free of him."

"So did I," she whispered. And now she knew they were both talking about Black.


	15. Chapter 15

**Close Encounters 6**

* * *

Beckett was dressed in Carrie's clothes - jeans and a concert t-shirt from Duran Duran, a motley colored thing with bright purple and metallic blue that made her look entirely too young for him. Castle fingered the hem of her shirt and she gave a little self-conscious huff of breath before she leaned into him.

He embraced her and heard Carrie approach them, her feet louder than normal on the back porch steps, and he smiled a little and turned to his former partner's wife.

"Thanks for taking us in," he said quietly, holding out a hand to her.

She grasped his tightly and nodded, then she pulled Kate out of his arms and into her own, hugged Kate so fiercely that a rush of breath went out of her. Castle felt strangely relieved to know that Carrie was there equally for them. Either of them.

"You should take the truck," she murmured.

"No," he said. "Don't want it traced back to you. The cab is fine."

"You need more money?" Carrie asked, releasing Kate only to catch hold of her hand like she didn't want to let go this time.

"He has plenty," Kate said with a little laugh. She gave him a look of her eyes that made him want to strip that metallic band shirt right over her head and go for her pants next, but she laughed again and pushed lightly on his shoulder. "We're good, Carrie. Thank you. And thank you for keeping Sasha for us. I never meant for it to be open-ended."

"It can be for as long as you need."

"We'll get a place soon," Castle answered firmly.

Kate lifted her eyebrows, but she only shook her head at him and reached for his hand. "We have a lot of things to work out."

"There's nothing to work out," he said bluntly.

"Hush," she murmured. "We'll talk in the car."

And like she'd conjured it, a cab was grinding up the gravel drive and coming to a stop with a short honk. Kate reached down and took the duffle bag of supplies they'd borrowed from Carrie and handed it over to him with a push. He turned for the dog first though, scraped his fingers through the soft mane of fur, let Sasha lick his neck and whine as she nudged him with her head.

"Be back soon," he whispered. "In our own place. No matter what your momma says."

He got a knee to his ribs for that, Kate huffing at him as she pushed him out of her way. She loved on the dog too, hugged Carrie good-bye, and then she was guiding him down the porch steps and towards the waiting cab.

His hand was bandaged, his cheek had a blackening bruise, his ribs ached, but he had Kate Beckett. And everything - she was right. Everything could be worked out.

* * *

She flexed her fingers in between his and their digits lined up, tips to tips, their joined hands resting on the seat in between them. She hummed at the feel of his skin, the callouses and the warmth, let her head rest against his shoulder.

Castle reached between them with his free hand and used his thumb and finger to circle their kissing thumbs, up and down, slowly, erotic and tender at once. She closed her eyes and let herself coast in it, ride the wave of quiet that swelled and swirled around her.

"I love you," he spoke softly, a breath at the top of her head.

"I love you," she said into the stillness.

They'd talked; they'd hashed out their plan for confronting his father. There was so many things not still said, so much undefined and waiting for substance and clarity, but this moment of strange and intimate allure in the backseat of a cab, halfway to the city, was knitting together every broken place.

His fingers stretched out against hers, his palm wider and longer, their flesh warm and meeting with a curl, and she let her cheek rest hard against his shoulder, her eyes closed.

His other hand came to the top of her head and brushed the hair back from her forehead, looped it around her ear, and his lips were pressed into her skin, and then their fingers were sliding off each other's and gripping, squeezing, laced together now.

It was time to make every secret thing known.

* * *

"I don't know yet," she said firmly, even though her answer wasn't an answer.

"I think you should stay in the waiting room," he said again.

"I don't know yet, Castle."

He wasn't frowning at her, at least there was that. He did squeeze her hand a little harder even though it was his bruised knuckles doing the work, but she didn't hesitate.

Kate reached out and pressed the call button on the south side of the hospital lobby. The bank of four elevators responded at once, cables and gears whining and churning, the floor itself seemingly vibrating under their feet, and then Castle pointed to the one on the right, nearest them.

"I call it. Bet I'm right."

"No way," she took up immediately. "Far left. I win, you give me three hours to take a bath. All by myself. Bubbles and wine and a book."

He huffed. "I can't even play a little, sit by the side of the tub? Maybe read it to you?"

She cocked her head, heard the ding of their competing elevators as they went through each floor. "I'll consider it."

"And when I win?"

She shrugged, eyes on the sluggish movement of her horse in the race.

"When I win," he said slowly. "When I win, you let me pick our new place. No questions asked."

She narrowed her eyes, gave her elevator a steady glance. "Deal."

"Deal," he breathed, and his eyes were too wide, his grin a little too placed. He was trying for her, because he knew she was hanging on by a thread.

The light on the call button popped off and she heard the sound of elevator doors grunting open, and they both looked up.

But it wasn't either of their picks.

He chuckled and turned back to her with a shrug. "It's a draw." His eyes were set into a deep smile that kept springing up on his lips as well, and he tugged her forward into the open elevator with his heart peeled open for her to see.

She loved this man - this one right here. The tender one who cracked jokes to keep her going and yet stood beside her every step and lurch of the way towards the hardest thing she'd ever had to do.

Face the devil.

And stare him down.

Without flinching.

Only Rick Castle could make that seem at all possible.

* * *

God, she was amazing. She was patient and careful and reserved, and she was fierce and loyal and insistent. Her integrity and strength of character made him want to drop to his knees sometimes, even when her mistakes and her trauma and her issues made their path together seem a maze of broken glass.

Like it did now.

And here he was, knee-walking over those jagged remnants. Because of her.

Kate Beckett strode down the hall of New York Presbyterian Hospital, looking for all the world like she owned the place and everyone in it.

Esposito was in the waiting room and he jumped to his feet when he saw them, when he saw _her_, and Castle found Agent Jones - the assassination specialist - standing rough guard just outside the door leading to ICU. He had his arms crossed but he shifted forward when Beckett and Castle approached.

"Agent Castle," he said gravely. "You heard about your father?"

He and Beckett had agreed on this point. "What was he doing at the Plaza?" Castle said quietly, taking Jones to one side as Esposito and Beckett looked on. "Jones. You know who was holding a fundraiser in that exact location, right?"

Jones winced and rubbed his jaw with a hand. "I know. I know. Look, you didn't hear this from me, but your father has had it out for the Senator for more than a decade now. When he brought me in on this op and filled me in on the investigation, I can't say I was surprised."

"But it was all set in place. Why would he take on Bracken alone?" Castle asked, feeding Jones the bits and pieces of the story he and Beckett had written together. "It doesn't make sense, Jones. I've got to see him. I've go to know what I'm supposed to be telling people. The Director of the CIA will be down here in a matter of hours, and I'll have to have something to report."

Jones was nodding thoughtfully. "I'm not supposed to let anyone into his room, Director's orders. But. . ."

Castle didn't push; he knew Jones, as a loyal man, would want to protect Black. Castle hadn't been sure who would be here, but they were in luck that it was the specialist - a man who already knew so much about what had been about to happen.

Jones sighed. "Okay, I can give you twenty minutes or so. He's been in and out of it, son, so it might not be pretty."

He set his jaw and nodded. He still hadn't been able to think much past the story they'd come up with, hadn't wanted to actually dwell on his father's condition, and who was really responsible for it.

"Bracken's goons did a number on him?" he said carefully, once more planting the seeds of their story in Jones's mind.

The agent shook his head once with a sigh, like he was trying to dislodge the mental image Castle had instilled: Agent Black taking on the Senator only to be dragged into that alley and beat to a pulp.

"I don't even know what's going on with our mission," Jones said with a disgusted sigh. "You need to let me know what he says."

"It's got to be scrapped," Castle said bleakly. "I ditched training when I heard about Black. And don't you think Bracken will increase his security after something like this?"

"You're right," Agent Jones said mournfully, rubbing his jaw again. "You're right. It's got to be scrapped."

Castle let out a small breath of relief. "Okay, Beckett and I are going to talk to him, Jones. We'll let you know."

But Jones paused, seemed to study Castle.

Rick forced himself not to hold his breath and he reached casually for Beckett's hand; their clasp would hide his bruised knuckles, and the black eye from Esposito was already something Agent Jones had seen.

If it was puffier and more brutal looking than it'd been, Jones couldn't possibly notice.

"All right," Jones said finally. "The both of you. Room 1006. Twenty minutes."

Jones stepped away from the automatic doors that led on to the rest of the floor and he let them pass.

Still in Castle's grip, Kate's hand began to sweat.

* * *

When they turned the corner and and came down the long hall and finally in front of Room 1006, Castle let go of her hand.

"You don't have to go in there," he said, giving her an out. "You can stand right here. No one will know."

"I'll know," she answered quietly. Her hands were damp and her back ached at her scar, the force of it driving pain clear through to her sternum. She bit her bottom lip and waited for Castle to lead the way.

Only he didn't. "Kate. You have nothing to prove."

Except she did. And not just to herself. But to Castle. Because it was his own father who had marched her out into the gritty alley between the Plaza Hotel and some brick office building, the chain link fence in her view and the rush of traffic too far to help; it was Rick's father who had calmly ordered her to her knees and stood at only a few feet away and leveled the gun on her.

It was her husband's father.

And she had to prove to him that it was actually and only a CIA agent named Black.

And Black had nothing at all to do with the man she loved.

So Kate nudged him aside and pushed open the door herself and led them into Black's hospital room.

Her partner had her back.

* * *

The rush and beep of machines measured out the moments.

Kate's feet were stuck fast to the floor even as her throat constricted, a keratin ring around her trachea that thickened and hardened until every breath was a competition for space, crowded and throwing punches.

The thing in the bed was unconscious.

The marred lines of his face were distorted by purple and black swelling, the jagged edge of starburst stitching, and the mottled bruises. The oxygen tube under his nose was askew, the chest looked concave under the sheet and hospital gown.

But still deadly. A thing that carried plague and might - at any moment - rise up with his one seeing eye and clutch at her with that clawed hand.

Everything was heavy, from the air dragging down her lungs to the set of her spine bowing out. Heavy. Her chest ached and couldn't expand with it.

Still. She didn't turn and run.

The room was gnarled with every encounter and every touch and every terror, but Beckett withstood.

She finally turned her head to look at Castle and he was swaying forward, hands clenched in fists, chest rising and falling erratically.

She reached out to - to help? - but he jerked forward to the side of the bed and stared down at his father.

"Let's wake him up," he rasped.

* * *

Castle wanted Black's eyes open and his mind clear when it started.

Oh, yes.

He had thought about this in the cab, considered the role he would play in their scene, but he found the reality of it-

Brutal.

He found the reality of it made him want to wrap his fingers around Black's throat and crush the air out of his lungs until he bucked and writhed and pissed himself.

He wanted to _fuck_ him _up._

Castle reached for the IV and pinched the line, halting the flow of meds down into the tough, leathery skin. "Kate," he ground out.

She was at his side in a moment and he grabbed her hand and wrapped her fingers around the line.

"Like this," he said. He lifted his head and met her eyes and she was standing there with her fingers blocking the IV and he saw the tremor of her pulse in her neck. "Don't let go."

She nodded.

Castle moved around her to the other side of the bed and caught the flicker of a muscle twitching beneath the blankets. He could hear every one of his wife's breaths and he counted them to keep his heart beating.

And then he looked at his father in the face.

This was what he'd done. He let the image play out, superimposed over the man in the bed, let the film clatter through to its terrible and screaming end: opening the exit door and finding Kate on her knees, the gun pointed at her head, and the length of steady arm attached to its shoulder and flaring up to that one man.

Blackest night.

He would never forget.

This man had made his childhood a cold and lightless place, but Castle had found ways to survive. This man had ordered his life and arranged his every movement and dictated his days with an iron grip and had not once, not once, let go. But Castle had survived even that.

Putting a gun to his wife's head was not to be survived.

He reached for Black's hand and pinched the sensitive webbing between the man's thumb and forefinger. Harder. Harder.

Until Black awoke on a sucked in breath and flared his eyes open to see.

* * *

She hadn't known. Not really. She'd thought she had because she'd been with him all over Europe and they'd killed side by side and she'd saved his life and he'd saved hers, but she hadn't known, truly, that this side of him existed.

She had watched him instead of looking at the man in the bed because Castle was always the one to keep her steady, and so she had seen that moment of change.

She had seen him gathering his resolve and his anger and his desperate grief around him like armor plates and she had seen the slow blink of his eyes as he gave in to it.

He became the darkness.

Her fingers tightened on the IV tube and Castle stared down at his father's wide, seeing eyes.

"Richard," the man slurred out.

Her heart pounded thick in her mouth and she fought to stay upright.

"Good. You're with us," Castle said. His voice had the low tones of carelessness, as if this was entirely unimportant. His hand moved up to the inside of Black's elbow and then his knuckles pushed hard and swift into Black's broken and taped ribs, catching him off guard.

The man in the bed arched, the movement arrested and restrained through a force of will so strong that not a sound passed his clenched teeth.

And then Castle released the pressure.

Black turned his eyes to her first, a long and amused look, before he looked at Castle again. "Son. You've already made your point. Don't you think?"

Her fingers were frozen around the IV tubing and she felt it slip, clutched harder at it as Castle reached back and dragged a plastic chair over the floor towards his father's bed. The chair clattered and screeched and came to a stop beside the raised bed.

Castle sat down, seemingly at ease, and laid a hand on the bed in careful placement.

"Have I made my point?" he said slowly.

Kate found the eyes back on her once more and she realized it was all still a game to him. Black was still attempting to push Castle's buttons.

But Castle torqued Black's already puffy pinky finger and those eyes jerked away from her and closed, panting breaths through a tortured chest.

"My point," Castle said calmly. "Oh yes. I remember now."

Kate shivered as Black's eyes flared open and scalded a line down to his son, sitting sedately at his bedside.

Castle leaned in. "You and I have a problem."

Black wheezed out through a laugh. "A failure to communicate?"

Something dark and slithering went through Castle's eyes and Beckett's fingers pinched harder over the line, her own nails digging into her palms.

Castle tapped a finger over Black's elbow as if thoughtlessly. "I have a solution to my problem," he said, and she watched as his fingers pressed harder into the vulnerable skin. "But for some reason, Beckett is opposed. I think it's just that she's better than both of us."

Black's finger curled and released, the only outward sign of the agony Castle's touch had to be inflicting on the inflamed nerve at his elbow.

"Beckett has an alternate solution."

"You have me all ears," Black roughed out, trying for smooth and succeeding only in making Kate's skin crawl.

"You live," Castle said. "She lives. Life for life."

As Black expanded his lungs for a chance to speak, Castle casually leaned into the bed and hid from Kate whatever movement he made. But Black's chest caved in and his body arched, and Castle was standing up now, still blocking her view, his eyes so blank and dead.

"She lives," Castle said again. "You don't touch her. You don't talk to her. You don't fuck up her life or mine, you don't start mind games or little wars. She lives and you don't have any say in how or with who or where."

Even though whatever Castle was doing made Black's body rigid in the bed, he grit his teeth and forced words out. "And you think I'll go quietly?"

"You will." Kate said suddenly, pushing her hand out to Castle and gripping him hard. She released the IV line and felt the tremble run through the man in the bed. "You'll do it. Because otherwise we go out of this room and we tell what happened in that alley. How you fought with Senator Bracken and tried to murder him. How I came to his rescue. How you put me on my knees and tried to execute me."

Black's eyes were resolutely on her now. She had him. She _had_ him.

"You think it's my word against yours? I've got two detectives in the NYPD who will back me up, plus Senator Bracken himself, and whoever else he can buy, bribe, or blackmail. You two have some bad blood. You think he's not willing to help me fuck you up?"

She leaned back now, let the resolution come to her face.

"You don't get to have Castle either. Not me. Not him. Anyone in my family gets hurt - anyone I love gets in a car accident or gets fucking audited by the IRS, then we tell our side of the story. We've already got half the men down the hall believing you're unhinged and desperate to eliminate a US Senator. All it takes is a nudge."

Kate took a long breath and she saw the calculation in his eyes, the dark and commanding need for a control being wrested from him.

"I'm done," she said then and turned her head to Castle.

He was studying her. He was not yet himself.

"You finish this up," she said, and she heard the hollow echo of her voice in the room. "I'm done."

She turned her back on the man in the bed and walked out of the room.

* * *

He watched Beckett leave.

And then he turned back to the bed.

"I went easy on you because she was in the room," he said softly. "I went easy on you because when she's here, I'm in control. I'm trained to do this, trained by you. And I know how to make it hurt now, and hurt for a long time later. I know how to fuck up your nervous system so that you will always have pain."

His father said nothing.

"But now that she's gone."

And it was saying the words in that order. It was hearing his own voice, calm and detached, that reconnected him to his body and pushed the maelstrom straight down into his chest and made him shake with it.

"If I ever - if she is ever gone - if she's gone," Castle rasped. "There is nothing to stop me. Do you understand? Not just in this room. But in this God damned world. Nothing will stop me. I will fuck you up and make you live to see your entire kingdom come down around your head."

"This. . ." Black let out a long and wheezing breath. "This is how you love?"

"This is how I grieve," Castle hissed. "Love is what kept me from doing it _now_."

"She only ruins you. She ruins it all."

Castle was breathing like he'd run a marathon, but he jerked the chair back from the bed and replaced it at the far side of the room. He stood at the end of the bed and stared at his father.

"Are we clear?"

"You're throwing away everything."

"Here's the last of it," Castle said evenly. "After this hospitalization, you'll withdraw from service."

"Fuck you."

"You'll tender your resignation. You will cite retirement and declining health; you will not nominate a replacement."

"You ungrateful little bastard."

"You walk away with a pension plan and your place in the South Pacific. You play your fucked up games from there for all I care. But not in my back yard, not with my Kate, and not in my life."

"Fuck this medication, damn it. . ." Black was rolling his eyes back and trying to move, as if he wanted out of the bed. "I will not let this civilian whore take everything I have and-"

"There's one thing you get in return," Castle said finally, and his hands clenched at his side. His father's imprecations rattled him; he'd never heard the man curse in true anger before.

Black grunted and his body shook in the bed; one hand clenched the railing and the other clawed at the sheets and Castle felt his whole being ripped inside out.

"I get. What? I get what?" Black gritted out.

"I stay in the CIA."

Black let out a long and dangerous breath; his heart rate and blood pressure were wild. Castle had to get out of here before the nurses came to check on him.

"I do my job," he said again. "You wanted me? Well, you've got me."

"You are my son," Black growled finally. "You can't deny who you are. Your training. Your legacy."

"It's my training, but Kate is my legacy," he said quietly. "Do we have a deal?"

Black clutched at the railing harder and his chest worked. "You don't - leave me much choice."

"There is always a choice. Kate has taught me that. Do we have a deal?"

"You stay in the CIA," Black roughed out. "I leave. She lives. Bracken?"

"Has nothing to do with you, but he murdered her mother. Do you think I'm letting that go?"

"That's why you're staying," Black said with some relish.

Castle couldn't deny it, and he didn't like giving his father any satisfaction at all. But he'd be gone, retired, out of it. "Do we have a deal?"

"Deal." And then Black laughed, a strange and scraping sound. "You have no idea what you've done."

For a moment, it caught him. It actually made him pause.

And then he remembered who he was dealing with.

Castle was done.

He turned and he left.

* * *

They sat down side by side in the waiting room chairs and even though there were CIA agents scattered here and there, he turned his palm up over his thigh and stretched out his fingers, waiting for her.

She took his hand.

"You okay?" he murmured.

"No. You?"

"No." He said in a breath and closed his eyes, couldn't keep them like that for long. Too many visions, too much he'd done. The cold curl of her fingers around his kept him static and anchored for now, and he focused on that one connection.

"How long?" she said then.

"I don't know. Director should be here any moment. After that, we'll find a place for tonight. And then. . ."

"And then."

"Life?"

She sucked in a breath more ragged than clean and he squeezed those fingers in his.

"We can do it, Kate. We can."

"I don't think I want to do this anymore," she whispered. "I can't be this person."

He nodded slowly, his guts churning. "I don't want you to, either."

"But I don't want you to be alone," she murmured. Her voice caressed even as it cut. "You need a partner. I'm your partner. I don't - I can't let you go alone."

"Staying in the CIA is part of the deal," he said quietly. "We talked about this."

"It ensures his cooperation. I know. I do. I just. . ."

"I don't want you to do this either," he said again. "I don't. Go back to being a cop. You're so good at it, Kate. So good."

"I can't leave you to him."

"He'll be retiring," he said quietly.

"Still."

Their words fell off and into nothing. Her fingers flexed in his and he stared at the linoleum floor.

"I don't know what I want," she said finally. "I can't make this decision now."

"Then, don't. Leave it alone."

She nodded, silent, and he wished again that she hadn't gone in that hospital room.

A flurry of movement caught his eye and he lifted his head.

The Director was here.

* * *

She found a room for them online at Larchmont Hotel and booked it while he talked with the Director of the CIA in a room off the hospital's main corridor. She could see them across from where she sat in the waiting room, see the grave set to Castle's mouth and the serious slant of the older man's shoulders.

The Director was gray-haired and grizzled, like he still spent time in the field. His eyes were the same piercing blue as Castle's, and Beckett had a strange and brutal surge of feeling in which she wished this man was his father instead. She pressed the heel of her hand to her chest where the scar ached straight through like a knife.

The Larchmont and then?

She had no idea. He'd said _life_ but that was a long-term goal that seemed both ridiculous and entirely unavailable.

Esposito came back into the waiting room and sank down to a chair beside her. His knee knocked into hers once.

"Nice shirt, Beckett."

She glanced down at herself and saw the band tshirt, the metallic lettering and the ratty hem. Kate huffed and lifted her eyes to one half of her best team. "You know. Going old school."

"You pull it off. Me on the other hand." He shook his head.

"I don't know, Javi," she said, her voice warming as she spoke. "A tight tshirt, show off those guns - Barry Manilow maybe?"

He growled and hulked in the chair beside her, all swarthy and male and feigned hurt.

Castle rose from his seat with his hands at his side, a look of resignation. She felt the laugh that had germinated at Espo's arrival suddenly die stillborn in her chest.

"I've been listening to the scuttlebutt," Esposito said quickly. "Everyone thinks that Black has finally gone off his rocker."

She let out a fast breath and glanced to Javier. "Yeah?"

He nodded. "That he confronted Bracken, that Bracken's men took him to the woodshed."

She released her fists on her knees and pushed her fingers into the material of her borrowed jeans.

"Beckett," he said suddenly. "You gotta know. He gets near you and I'll kill him. Ryan too. I made him pinky swear."

The laugh tumbled out of her mouth, weak and spindly, but there nonetheless. She turned to Espo and hooked her arm around his shoulders, tugged him in for a quick hug. He grumbled and shrugged her off, stood up again.

"You guys need watchdogs tonight?"

She smiled up at him, let him see how much it had helped, and shook her head. "No. We have to trust that it's worked."

Espo shook his head. "Only so far you can go with that."

"We know," Castle said suddenly. "But for now, it's what it is."

Kate shifted her gaze and saw him standing just inside the door, the breadth of his shoulders fitting frame to frame.

"I don't like it," Espo said roughly.

"Neither do I," Castle sighed. There was bleakness in his mouth that made her heart clench.

"It'll work for now," she insisted. "It's the best we can do until we find a better way."

She saw him take a long, slow inhalation, and she was relieved to see that his eyes were settled. He was tired, and he was wounded, but he wasn't hopeless.

She'd thought he'd been dead. And then he hadn't been. She could handle anything else, so long as he was here. And now-

"Kate," he said, swallowing hard. "I want to get out of here. But I've got no idea where-"

"Yeah. I found us a room for tonight," she said softly. "And then we'll see about the rest."

She stood to meet him in this new life.

* * *

Thus ends **Close Encounters 6: You Only Live Twice**

Stay Tuned for **Close Encounters 7: Live and Let Die**

* * *

She watched him in the waning light that spilled in through the open front door. _Their_ open front door.

He settled the box on top of a stack of them in the entryway and put his hands on his hips, his head tilting as he studied her. Kate couldn't see the details of his face, the way the light backlit him, but she almost could feel the soft smile, the tenderness there. The golden man.

He reached out and caught her hip, tugged her into him with a jerk that had her stuttering across the wooden floor and into his body. He smelled of sweat and sunshine and she leaned in to press her mouth to his neck.

"Hey there, sweetheart," he murmured to her, a hand coming into her hair and tangling. "You like it?"

"Love it," she breathed out.

When she lifted her head, she was close enough to see the pride in his face, the little boy pleasure at having gotten her a gift. She bit her lip and smiled back at him, cupped his cheek and scratched her nails along the five o'clock shadow.

"Hey, baby," she murmured. "You got the last of it?"

"Yeah. Last box. Boys still here?"

"Mm, whole crowd of them trying to make your illegal satellite tv work. I promised pizza," she answered. Her fingers trailed down his arm and snagged his hand; she leaned past him to shut the front door and then tugged him after her towards the kitchen.

"Pizza sounds good," he offered. "You have cash on you?"

Kate shook her head. "Was going to do it online-"

"No," he said quickly and she glanced back at him. She shouldn't be so surprised, not anymore; it should be second nature to her now, all the things he didn't want them to do. She could handle his paranoia; she could.

"Okay," she said slowly. "No online ordering. Got it. I can call?"

His lips pressed flat and his eyes went dark. "It gives them our address. There's a place a couple blocks over, right? I can just go for carry out."

So she was never allowed to order in pizza?

His hand squeezed in hers and she glanced down at their laced fingers, his strong forearms and the dusting of hair and freckles.

Okay. No pizza.

Not so hard.

"Get five or six," she said quietly. She cleared her throat and lifted her head to his gaze, saw the worry laced with a firmness that meant he wouldn't back down on this. He thought he was keeping them safe. And maybe he was.

"Five or six. All kinds?" he said.

She nodded and raised their joined hands, pressed them between their bodies as she lifted up on her toes. He seemed surprised by the kiss, and his hand startled to her hip, held her there. Kate took a breath and then nudged him away.

"Go get pizza. Gotta feed our boys."

He grinned back and that pleased pride was on his face again, sweet and almost shy. "I'll be back in thirty."

She let him go, watching him snake through the stacks of boxes towards the front door again. He plucked a key from the entry table and held it up to her, a little smirk, and then he disappeared out the front door.

She stood in their new home, her heart leaning after him, until the raucous noise of the officers and detectives from the 12th pulled her back to the present.

* * *

to be continued in** Close Encounters 7: Live and Let Die**


End file.
